Prototype Model of Potholes and Road-Roughness Detection and Reporting System

Power harvested from an onboard energy scavenging system is a function of road roughness, vehicle speed, a vehicle's suspension system, and driver behavior. We assert that such system may not only be a source for harvesting electrical power, but also the basis of valuable data that can be used in several expedient ways. In this paper, we propose a system architecture, and present a prototype that makes use of this valuable data for potholes detection. According to the proposal, a prototype, built in house, deduces information from onboard piezoelectric material based energy scavenging system, indexes it with GPS coordinates and timestamp, and transmits the data to a server. The server processes the data to visually display the potholes on a map.