AUTOMATIC PAVEMENT-DISTRESS-SURVEY SYSTEM

An automatic pavement-distress-survey system that uses laser, video, and image processing techniques has recently been developed. This system consists of a survey vehicle and a data-processing system. The survey vehicle can measure cracking, rutting, and longitudinal profile simultaneously, without contact, rapidly and accurately. The data-processing system can convert the measured data automatically into formats that can be used in the pavement data bank. As for cracking, cracks over 1 mm wide can be measured, and it is easy to output the various parameters calculated from length, width, direction, position and number of cracks. The cracking processor uses a unique line-finding algorithm that can extract a crack in a noisy road image by analysis of projection curves. This algorithm is implemented in special-purpose high-speed hardware. In this hardware, up to 512 32-bit microprocessors execute in parallel. This system allows automatic crack recognition that has conventionally only been performed by humans. © ASCE.