International Journal of Industrial Electronics and Electrical Engineering, ISSN: 2347-6982 Volume-5, Issue-1, Jan.

-2017
http://iraj.in
DETECTION OF HUMPS AND POTHOLES ON ROADS AND
NOTIFYING THE SAME TO THE DRIVERS
1
MADHUMATHY P, 2SAURABH SINGH, 3SHIVAM SHUKLA, 4UNNI KRISHNAN
1,2,3,4
Dayananda Sagar Academy of Technology and Management,Bangalore
E-mail: sakthi999@gmail.com

Abstract— Roads make up to the majority of means of transportation used as of today in India. Regular maintenance of
these roads is important as they are filled with unexpected hurdles such as potholes and humps. These hurdles cause vehicle
damage and also have caused a number of accidents in the past that make up to a considerable amount and should be given a
thought about. This paper proposes a cost-effective solution that provides timely alerts to the drivers regarding potholes or
humps. The proposed system can be divided into three sub-units: the sensing sub-unit, the server sub-unit and the user sub-
unit. At the sensing sub-unit, an ultrasonic sensor is used to detect potholes and humps, whose location co-ordinates are
retrieved by the GPS receiver. This data is stored to the database, which is the sever sub-unit. At the user sub-unit a hardware
module is set-up that provides timely alerts to the drivers regarding potholes and humps.

Keywords— Potholes and Humps, Ultrasonic Sensor, GPS Receiver, Database.

I. INTRODUCTION as potholes and humps and this information can be

used by the Government to correct these roads
India is considered one of the fastest developing effectively.
countries as of today. India's road network is gigantic,
giving it a thought about the condition of the roads. II. RELATED WORK
Roads indirectly contribute to the economic growth
of the country and it is extremely essential that the Youquan et al. [2] have developed a model which
roads are well built and strong. India is home to employs optical imaging principle of 3-dimensional
several bad roads be it the metropolitans, the cities or projection transformation to obtain pictorial
the villages. Since India is a developing nation there information of pothole’s cross-section in pothole
is a constant demand for good quality infrastructure, detection. Multiple digital image processing
transportation and services. But since India is a huge technologies, including: binarization, image
country with quite a sizable population this problem processing, thinning, three dimensional
still has not been addressed in totality. reconstruction, error analysis and compensation are
Over the past few years, there has been a large conducted in the series of image analysis and
increase in vehicle population. This increase in processing.
vehicle population has led to increasing road
accidents and also traffic congestion. According to Lin and Liu [3] have proposed a method for pothole
Global Road Safety Report, 2015 released by the detection based on SVM, where SVM stands for
World Health Organization (WHO), India accounts Support Vector Machine. Texture measure based on
for more than 200,000 deaths because of road the Histogram is extracted as the features of the
accidents. These accidents can be due to over- image region, and the non-linear support vector
speeding, drunk and driving, jumping traffic signals machine is built up to identify whether a target region
and also due to humps, speed-breakers and potholes. is a pothole. Based on this, an algorithm for
Hence it is important to collect information regarding recognizing the potholes of the pavement is proposed.
these poor road conditions and distribute the same to The experimental result shows that the algorithm can
other vehicles that in turn help reduce accidents achieve a high recognition rate.
caused due to potholes and humps [1].
Moazzam et al. [4] have developed a model in which
Roads are normally placed with speed breakers that a low cost Kinect sensor is used. Kinect gives the
are used to control the speed of the vehicle. But these direct depth measurements, thereby reducing
speed breakers have been a cause of accidents computing costs. Meshes are generated for better
because a definite dimension is not followed visualization of potholes. Area of pothole is analyzed
throughout. Likewise, potholes are formed due to oil with respect to depth. The approximate volume of
spills, heavy rains and also due to movement of heavy pothole is calculated using trapezoidal rule on area-
vehicles. These bad road conditions cause accidents, depth curves through pavement image analysis. In
affect the quality of driving and also consumes more addition pothole’s area, length, and width are
fuel. estimated. The paper also proposes methodology to
Hence, in this paper we have proposed a system that characterize pothole.
would notify the drivers regarding any hurdles such

Detection of Humps and Potholes on Roads and Notifying the Same to the Drivers

53
International Journal of Industrial Electronics and Electrical Engineering, ISSN: 2347-6982 Volume-5, Issue-1, Jan.-2017
http://iraj.in
Rode et al. [5] have designed a system in which conditions are detected using smartphone sensor. This
novel Wi-Fi based architecture for pothole detection system includes a set of sensors installed in vehicles.
and warning system which assists the driver in The most common approach for detecting road
avoiding pothole on the roads by prior warning. The condition is using sensors. GPS receiver is used to
system consists of access points placed on the road collect the data. This solution provides the method for
sides for broadcasting data, which can be received by detecting road anomalies like potholes.
Wi-Fi enable vehicles as they enter the area covered
by the influence of the access points. The application III.ARCHITECTURE OF THE PROPOSED
can be integrated in the vehicle so as to alarm the SYSTEM
driver in the form of a visual signal, audio signal or
even trigger the breaking system. This proposed system of detection and notification of
potholes and humps to the drivers is a cost effective
R. Sundar, et al. [6] have developed an intelligent solution.
traffic control system to pass emergency vehicles ARM7 Processor LPC 2148: ARM is a 32-bit
smoothly. Each individual vehicle is equipped with processor that uses RISC architecture and is generally
special radio frequency identification (RFID) tag faster than other controllers. Since RISC architecture
which makes it impossible to remove or destroy. If is used it consumes less power, has reduced heat and
RFID-tab read belongs to the stolen vehicle, then a is also low cost. ARM is the main component in the
message is sent using GSM SIM300 to the police proposed system as it is responsible for various tasks
control room. In addition, when an ambulance is such as processing the information received by the
approaching the junction, it will communicate to the sensors, sending this information to the server and
traffic controller in the junction to turn on the green also receiving alerts.
light.

Samyak Kathane, et al. [7] have proposed a model

which is Real time pothole detection and vehicle
accident detection and reporting system and
Antitheft. In this system the wireless access point
collects the information about potholes, it distributes
this information to BMC using wireless broadcast.
This system is used for the accident detection too.
Antitheft in car can help to save million of dollars.
Sensor boards that we used for collecting the
environmental data also has an accelerometer that can
measure both the vertical and the horizontal
acceleration. for example, when a bus goes over the
pothole there would be significant change in vertical
component of the acceleration and for humps there
would be a horizontal component.

Taehyeong Kim, et al. [8] proposed a paper in which

classification of potholes are given. Potholes are
classified according to the location, shape, length and
depth. Many researchers have studied the methods to
detect potholes and improve survey efficiency and Fig 1 Block diagram of the proposed system
pavement quality through prior investigation and
immediate action. With these detecting methods, Ultrasonic Sensor HC-SR04: Ultrasonic
there is need for developing a classification guideline sensors are based on measuring the properties of
for supporting decision-making system of pothole sound waves with frequency above the human
repair. The purpose of this study is to develop a audible range. The HC-SR04 module includes
guideline of pothole classification for supporting a ultrasonic transmitter, receiver and control circuit. It
decision-making system of pothole repair. is used to measure distance between two objects and
this distance is calculated based on the time taken by
Ajit Danti, et al. [9] have developed a model based the ultrasonic pulse to travel a particular distance.
on Image Processing approach. In this paper Haugh The module automatically sends a 40kHz square
Transformation is given for lane detection. Clustering wave and automatically detect the received pulse
based algorithm is used for detection of potholes. In signal. The distance is calculated based on the time
this experimental results are tested with real time taken by the transmitted signal to return.
image database. Gunjan Chugh, et al. [10] have GPS Receiver: GPS receiver is a
developed a system in which the various road constellation of 27 earth orbiting satellites. It is a

Detection of Humps and Potholes on Roads and Notifying the Same to the Drivers

54
International Journal of Industrial Electronics and Electrical Engineering, ISSN: 2347-6982 Volume-5, Issue-1, Jan.-2017
http://iraj.in
satellite navigation system and is used to capture the GSM modem and the same is displayed on the LCD
geographical location. The receiver can figure out display in the user vehicle. A LED light is used in
how far the signal has travelled by timing how long it two-wheelers to provide the alerts. The alert is
took the signal to arrive. It is maintained by US displayed 100 meters before the pothole or hump
government and is freely available to anyone with appears.
GPS receiver.
GSM SIM 900A: This GSM is a highly
flexible plug and play quad band for direct and easy
integration to RS232 applications. It can be used in
GPRS mode to connect to internet and do many
applications for data logging and control. In the
GPRS mode we can also connect to any remote FTP
server and upload files for data logging. This GSM
SIM is responsible for sending the sensed data to the
server and also in retrieving the information from the
server for notifications.
LCD Display JDH162A: Liquid Crystal
Display screen is an electronic display module. A
16x2 means it can display 16 characters per line and
there are 2 such lines. In this LCD each character is
displayed in 5x7 pixel matrix This is used to display
notifications regarding the humps and potholes on
roads and alert the driver.
Fig 2 Flow of the system
IV. ARCHITECTURE & IMPLEMENTATION
V. RESULTS
The architecture of proposed system consists of 3
parts: sensing unit, server unit and user unit as shown The working of our proposed system was tested in
in figure 1. simulated environment in which the demo model is
Sensing unit: This module consists of ARM created which consist of artificial humps as well as
processor (LPC2148), GPS receiver, ultrasonic sensor pothole and shown in figure 3.
(HC-SR04) and GSM SIM 900 modem. The distance
between the car body and the road is measured using The test was divided into two parts:
an ultrasonic sensor. A threshold value is set such that1. Detection of humps and potholes and this information
the value depends on ground clearance of the vehicle. was recorded and later was stored in the database.
The measured distance is compared with the2. Based on the detection of humps and potholes, the
threshold value to detect pothole or hump. If the alerts were sent from the stored information in the
measured distance is greater when compared with the database.
threshold value, then it is classified to be a pothole, For demo purpose, ARM7 (microcontroller) is fixed
and if the measured distance is less, then it is on a car and the threshold value of the car is
classified to be a hump. The location co-ordinates measured. The ARM7 module worked the same way
retrieved by the GPS receiver, along with this data the as expected to detect the humps and potholes and this
information regarding the detected pothole or hump information was sent to the database successfully,
at a particular location co-ordinate is transmitted to from the database the alert was sent to the user
the server using a GSM modem. notifying about the humps and potholes.
Server unit: The server unit is nothing but
the database. It is an intermediate layer between
sensing and user units. Its function is to store the
information received by the sensing unit and provide
the same to the user unit when requested. This unit
can also be updated regularly for accurate
information regarding the potholes and humps.
User unit: The user unit is responsible for
providing alerts regarding the potholes or humps on
roads at a particular given location. The GPS receiver
is constantly receiving information regarding its
location co-ordinates, using this information the
database is checked for any data around the given
location co-ordinates. Any data found, it is received
by the ARM processor from the database through the

Detection of Humps and Potholes on Roads and Notifying the Same to the Drivers

55
International Journal of Industrial Electronics and Electrical Engineering, ISSN: 2347-6982 Volume-5, Issue-1, Jan.-2017
http://iraj.in
Fig 3: Working model of the proposed system based on three-dimensional projection transformation,” in
CONCLUSION Proc. 4th Int. Congr. Image Signal Process (CISP), Oct.
2011, pp. 1805–1808.
[3] J. Lin and Y. Liu, “Potholes detection based on SVM in
The proposed system basically serves two purposes; the pavement distress image,” in Proc. 9th Int. Symp.
it automatically detects the potholes and humps and Distrib. Comput. Appl. Bus. Eng. Sci., Aug. 2010, pp. 544–
sends the information regarding this to the vehicle 547
[4] I. Moazzam, K. Kamal, S. Mathavan, S. Usman, and M.
drivers, so that they can avoid accidents. This is a Rahman, “Metrology and visualization of potholes using
cost efficient solution for detection of humps and the microsoft Kinect sensor,” in Proc. 16th Int. IEEE Conf.
potholes. This system is effective even in rainy Intell. Transp. Syst., Oct. 2013, pp. 1284–1291.
season when roads are flooded with rain water as well [5] S. S. Rode, S. Vijay, P. Goyal, P. Kulkarni, and K. Arya,
as in winter during low visibility, as the alerts are sent “Pothole detection and warning system: Infrastructure
support and system design,” in Proc. Int. Conf. Electron.
from the stored information in the server/database. Comput. Technol., Feb. 2009, pp. 286–290.
This system helps us to avoid dreadful potholes and [6] R. Sundar, S. Hebbar, and V. Golla, “Implementing
humps and hence to avoid any tragic accidents due to intelligent traffic control system for congestion control,
ambulance clearance, and stolen vehicle detection,” IEEE
bad road conditions. The information can also be
Sensors J., vol. 15, no. 2, pp. 1109–1113, Feb. 2015.
used by the Government authorities for the [7] Samyak Kathane, Vaibhav Kambli, Tanil Patel and Rohan
maintenance of the roads. Kapadia, “Real Time Potholes Detection and Vehicle
The proposed system can be further improved to Accident Detection and Reporting System and Anti-theft
(Wireless)”, IJETT, Vol. 21, No. 4, March 2015.
display alerts such as ‘Bad road ahead’ in order to [8] Taehyeong Kim, Seung-Ki Ryu, “A Guideline for Pothole
help the driver be more alert while driving/riding on Classification”, International Journal of Enginering and
such roads. Technology (IJET), Vol. 4, No. 10, October 2014.
[9] Gunjan Chugh, Divya Bansal and Sanjeev Sofat, “Road
Condition Detection Using Smartphone Sensor: A
REFERENCES
Survey”, International Journal of Electronic and Electrical
Engineering, Vol. 7, No. 6, 2014.
[1] Rajeshwari Madli, Santosh Hebbar, Praveenraj Pattar, and [10] Ajit Danti, Jyoti Y. Kulkarni, and P. S. Hiremath, “An
Varaprasad Golla, “Automatic Detection and Notification Image Processing Approach to Detect Lanes, Potholes and
of Potholes and Humps on Roads to Aid Drivers”, IEEE recognize road Signs in Indian Roads”, International
Sensors J., Vol. 15, No. 8, August 2015. Journal of Modeling and Optimization, Vol. 2, No. 6,
[2] H. Youquan, W. Jian, Q. Hanxing, Z. Wei, and X. December 2012.
Jianfang, “A research of pavement potholes detection



Detection of Humps and Potholes on Roads and Notifying the Same to the Drivers

56