Smartphone-Based Inertial Profiling System for Scalable and Low-Cost Road Roughness Monitoring

Road construction and maintenance have a significant impact on governmental budgets. Class 1 Inertial Profilers are the standard for measuring the quality of new road construction to ensure the work meets specifications. Their high cost of procurement and use prevents widespread adoption for ongoing monitoring of road surfaces to prioritize maintenance and repair. Using modern smartphones as Class 3 devices shows promise for reducing the cost of hardware and operation. This research seeks to identify sources of error between Class 1 and Class 3 devices and identify opportunities for reduction. The research finds that it is possible to reduce Class 3 device mean absolute error to under 10 inches/mile, greatly reducing costs while providing reliable data for improved decision making.