Improving road safety by analyzing pavement

October 21, 2024

The state of our roads is vital for our day-to-day lives. We expect routine maintenance and robust safety standards. This innovation developed by Xiangxi Tian provides a user-friendly, highly accurate solution for road maintenance crews, and is extremely promising to help precipitate a more seamless construction process, keeping us all safe out there on the roads.

Erinn Frank

Licensing Associate

summary

Road safety could be improved by optimizing pavement properties. Purdue University researchers have developed a method that uses a mobile application to take multiple photographs of a road’s surface, then an algorithm predicts future aggregation loss.

PROBLEM

To improve road safety for travelers, properties of pavement such as surface roughness, friction, and aggregation loss should be optimized. Current methods to test pavement during construction is limited to non-porous surfaces or cannot distinguish between old and new road cracks.

SOLUTION

Purdue University researchers have developed a mobile application that takes multiple photographs of a road surface, then rapidly renders a 3D model. Algorithms analyze surface roughness, distinguish between different types of pavement, and predict future aggregation loss.

Researchers validated the method by taking almost 800 photos at 25 unique sites on Indiana Department of Transportation roads.