Two engineers from Sarvajanik College of Engineering and Technology (SCET), Dipen Babariya and Mishal Jariwala, have built a new sort of detection system to monitor the state of roads in a city. It's basically a sensing system you can outfit in your car which maps the state of roads as you drive.

The two had developed the system as part of their course in SCET, and now market it as part of the company RoadMetrics. It basically uses a combination of a camera with image processing AI and a smartphone sensor installed in a car to detect when it's passing over potholes, cracks, or loose asphalt. It can then correlate that to road maps used for navigation, and automatically marks out rough stretches of roads as you drive past.

The two say they'd originally approached the Surat Municipal Corporation (SMC) about the app, who had expressed interest in it at the time. Now, they're working with SMC to broaden the project.

Gwyn D'Mello Updated: Oct 05, 2019, 11:47 IST4.9K SHARES
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Indian roads are so bad they're a meme unto themselves now. It's gotten so bad we've even seen parody newscasts and songs about them.

Of course, one common excuse is that officials don't have a way to monitor which roads need repairs. But not anymore.

pothole AI


Two engineers from Sarvajanik College of Engineering and Technology (SCET), Dipen Babariya and Mishal Jariwala, have built a new sort of detection system to monitor the state of roads in a city. It's basically a sensing system you can outfit in your car which maps the state of roads as you drive.

The two had developed the system as part of their course in SCET, and now market it as part of the company RoadMetrics. It basically uses a combination of a camera with image processing AI and a smartphone sensor installed in a car to detect when it's passing over potholes, cracks, or loose asphalt. It can then correlate that to road maps used for navigation, and automatically marks out rough stretches of roads as you drive past.
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The two say they'd originally approached the Surat Municipal Corporation (SMC) about the app, who had expressed interest in it at the time. Now, they're working with SMC to broaden the project.


"Our roads in the city can be repaired fast before they develop major defects by using this system. It gives an accurate and detailed assessment of the condition of a road," Dipen says.

After all, it doesn't just automatically capture data on the state of the roads in an area, with no cost to manpower or time. But because of how the data is gathered, it's also that much easier to digitize that data and cross-check it with the app just by driving in the right direction.

This won't just make driving in India much easier in the future, but also safer. In 2017, as many as 3,597 people were killed in pothole accidents, and 25,000 were left injured. In 2018, it was 10 Indians everyday dying in these incidents.