Ride vibrations: Towards comfort-based bicycle navigation

Abstract

Providers for common navigation systems and mobile applications apply their route choice concepts for cars almost unmodified to cyclists. In contrast to motorists the latter are not significantly influenced by the traffic situation or speed limits, but notably by other factors like slopes and path's surface type and quality. In a volunteered geographic information fashion this paper contributes a smartphone-based mobile sensing and evaluation approach for bicycle way's roughness. It presents the complete process chain from data acquisition using the mobile app "RideVibes"to a detailed data analysis on street segment level to finally enable a comfort sensitive route optimization and recommendation.