Crater: A Crowd Sensing Application To Estimate Road Conditions

Abstract

We have designed and developed a smart phone application that measures shocks and vibrations when it nds itself on the road in order to map and measure the locations of potholes and speed breakers. Simultaneously, it also measures the vehicle's speed in order to measure tra c congestion as a function of the number of users at a particular location and their speed relative to free ow conditions (when there is no congestion). The application does not require any input from its user and reports mea- surements to an Azure hosted application which stores data from cellphones of all users and jointly processes this data to obtain a better and more com- plete estimate of road conditions, and tra c congestion. This information is published on separate maps that is made publicly available via our website. The uploaded information allows citizens and municipal authorities alike to spot potholes, road segments in need of repair, congestion hubs, and im- balances in infrastructure maintenance e orts across cities. If the munici- pality has data of approved and legally constructed speed bumps, it is able to identify all others as illegally constructed. The government can use this information to allocate more funds to areas that are desperately in need of repair and see more tra c. On the other hand, the public can keep an eye on how e ciently the authorities work to repair road conditions in their area and if politicians actually carry out the actions that they claim to do during election season.