Three Indian Guys Developed A Pothole Detecting App

There is one thing that Indian cities and towns need to improve is their roads’ quality. No matter how many times they have fixed it, the potholes still appear, resulting in uncomfortable and dangerous journeys, especially for two-wheelers. To deal with this situation, a startup has come up with a solution.

Computer science graduate Dipen Babariya, his colleague Mishaal Jariwala, and Nikhil Prasad Maroli, an Industrial Engineering expert, have worked together to create RoadMetrics. The app detects potholes as well as cracks on the route in real-time so that people can choose a better and safer route.

While there is Google Maps, it isn’t optimized for Indian roads yet. In an interview, Dipen said that the team realized that a map needed to be created to meet Indian road conditions.

The team then take a look at the sensor data and images from their smartphones to categorize deformities. The pothole is classified by the AI algorithm like cracks, alligator, horizontal, vertical, etc, in accordance with the available data.

Mishaal Jariwala said that the team detected 12 types of deformities. They had used more than 100,000 image data points to train the algorithm, resulting in over 90% of accuracy. Sensor data (gyroscope and accelerometer) was collected for further validation to increase accuracy.

There are two variants of the app, mobile, and enterprise. For the mobile one, you can select the vehicle to have the appropriate routes suggested to you. The roads will show up in different colors to show their condition. Green means a smooth ride while Red means the opposite.

The mobile app is still in its beta stage and shows an accuracy rate of more than 90% without any human intervention.

At the moment, the app has covered around 1000 kilometers of roads around the country. The team expects that they will cover 10,000 kilometers by the end of 2020. They are working with Surat Municipal Corporation to run a pilot project of the app.

>>> Bengaluru To Use Sensor-Based Technology To Deal With Roads’ Potholes