Road surface monitoring using smartphone sensors: A review

Abstract

Road surface monitoring is a key factor to providing smooth and safe road infrastructure to road users. The key to road surface condition monitoring is to detect road surface anomalies, such as potholes, cracks, and bumps, which affect driving comfort and on-road safety. Road surface anomaly detection is a widely studied problem. Recently, smartphone-based sensing has become increasingly popular with the increased amount of available embedded smartphone sensors. Using smartphones to detect road surface anomalies could change the way government agencies monitor and plan for road maintenance. However, current smartphone sensors operate at a low frequency, and undersampled sensor signals cause low detection accuracy. In this study, current approaches for using smartphones for road surface anomaly detection are reviewed and compared. In addition, further opportunities for research using smartphones in road surface anomaly detection are highlighted.