Detection of road surface states from tire noise using neural network analysis

Abstract

This report proposes a new processing method for automatically detecting the states of road surfaces from tire noises of passing vehicles. In addition to multiple indicators of the signal features in the frequency domain, we propose a few feature indicators in the time domain to successfully classify the road states into four categories: snowy, slushy, wet, and dry states. The method is based on artificial neural networks. The proposed classification is carried out in multiple neural networks using learning vector quantization. The outcomes of the networks are then integrated by the voting decision-making scheme. Experimental results obtained from recorded signals for ten days in the snowy season demonstrated that an accuracy of approximately 90% can be attained for predicting road surface states using only tire noise data. © 2010 The Institute of Electrical Engineers of Japan.