Road Surface Condition Distinction Method Using Reflection Intensities Obtained by Ultrasonic Sensor

Accidents in daily life happen more often on elderly people owing to regressions in judgement and physical abilities. Meanwhile, the increasing number of accidents happened on visual impairment is becoming a social problem. Based on backgrounds, the movement support systems for improving the safety of elderly and visually impaired people are attracting a lot of attentions. In our previous research, road surface condition distinction method using reflection intensities obtained by ultrasonic sensor has been proposed. The proposed method is applied to the movement support system for elderly or visually impaired people for detecting dangerous road surfaces and giving an alarm to users. In this paper, the method based on the previous one with puddle detecting ability is proposed, and the evaluation of the improved method has been implemented according to experimental results. The proposed method can be applied in support systems on wheel chairs and white canes for improving safety.