Aspen - Accelerometer System for Pavement Evaluation
ASPEN measures the vibration of a car with a smartphone and evaluates its suspension. It then calculates the IRI which shows how even the road is.
Project's goal
The aim of the project is to develop a demonstration system that measures road unevenness, simultaneously using multiple smartphones as vibration and localization sensors. The road network should provide a comfortable and safe ride. These aspects are approximately described by the evenness of the road pavement and the number of cracks. Modern smartphones mounted in cars “tremble like an aspen leaf”, thus they enable the effective acquisition of information about the shaking level using accelerometers and gyroscopes. This information can be translated into indicators determining the evenness of the road surface and the comfort of driving using data filtering algorithms, mechanical suspension models and machine learning methods.
Space assets
Satellite navigation is the basis for assignment of road localization. Attribution of spatial data to a location within the road network is done through the use of satellite navigation. Its accuracy significantly influences the quality of the output.
Smartphones
The use of smartphones equipped with accelerometers, gyroscopes and GNSS receivers allows for obtaining an objective information about the status of the entire network in a simple and inexpensive way, which is necessary for spatial presentation in online systems in the form of maps and specialised graphs.
