Project
| # | Title | Team Members | TA | Documents | Sponsor |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 35 | Road Interference Mapper (The RIM) |
Euiho Jung Minh Le Zhiyuan Zheng |
Kristina Miller | appendix1.pdf appendix2.pdf appendix3.zip design_document5.pdf final_paper1.pdf presentation1.pdf proposal1.pdf |
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| # Road Interference Mapper (The RIM) ## Team Members Zhiyuan Zheng; zhiyuan3, Ethank Jung; ejung10, Minh Le; minhql2 ## Problem Roadway obstacles are often hard to spot when focusing on all of the other aspects of driving. During rush hours in the city, when you're stuck in bumper to bumper traffic, it is nearly impossible to avoid all hazards on the road. Finding and removing every roadside obstacle in a timely manner is just not possible. Debris and potholes can remain on the road for weeks, months, or even years. The result of a direct collision with one of these obstacles usually just results in a bump and possibly a flat tire. However, in the worst case it can cause cars to veer off course and even cause accidents. ## Solution Overview Our solution to prevent car accidents on the road is to share the information of roadways if there are any debris and potholes on the roads. By constantly sensing the average distance to the road using ultrasonic sensors, any deviation in distance to the road within a certain threshold would signify the presence of a pothole or debris. A micro controller would constantly process the distance data and, upon detection of an obstacle, send a signal to a smartphone app notifying the app of a detected interference. The smartphone app would then mark the location of the obstruction on a map using the location capabilities of the smartphone. All users using this app would be able to see every marked obstruction on their own map and would be able to look out for and avoid the obstacle. Because of the limitations of ultrasonic sensors, our solution will only detect debris and potholes in slower areas such as residential and commercial zones where the speeds are around 10-20 mph. ## Uniqueness There are other applications that aim to detect potholes and debris, however these applications utilize the sensors of a smartphone such as the accelerometer and the gyroscope to detect the impact with an obstacle. This method can only detect obstacles that were hit. Our solution will utilize an array of sensors to detect roadside obstacles. This will allow for more accurate results and more importantly, our solution will detect obstacles, such as potholes, that a driver may have driven over without collision. ## Solution Components ### Power A DC battery will be used to power the micro controller which will directly power the sensors. This way the micro controller can be put to sleep and woken up from the smartphone app. The micro controller and sensors will be powered on when the user opens the app. In turn, the system will be put to sleep once the user closes the app. ### Sensors Ultrasonic sensors will be arranged along a malleable mounting strip that can be easily attached to the bottom of any car in a horizontal array. This strip of sensors would need to span the entire width of the car, from wheel to wheel in order to detect obstacles both underneath the car and obstacles around the tires. These sensors will continuously collect data that describes the distance between the bottom of the car and the road. Ultrasonic sensors have a fairly low update rate, however sensors with a higher update rate are extremely expensive and not practical for our use. Therefore, these sensors will be operating at fairly low speeds, around 10 mph. ### Processing A bluetooth enabled microcontroller will be used to interpret the data inputted by the sensors. The microcontroller will continuously compare current depth data from the sensors with past depth data from the sensors. Based on this comparison, the microcontroller will be programmed to make a decision on whether or not road interferences are present. ### Software/Front-End A smartphone application will constantly probe the processing unit for detected road interferences. Upon the detection of an interference, the application will mark the location of the interference using the gps and location functionality of the phone. ## Criterion for Success - Our project will be tested using a small remote control vehicle on an artificially made environment made of cardboard or wood. This environment will contain potholes of various depth and debris of various sizes. Our vehicle will move around and near each obstacle at fairly low speeds around 10 mph. Each obstacle will be detected by our sensors and processing unit and the location of each obstacle will be marked on a map on a nearby smartphone. This system is easily scalable to detect obstacles on a real, wider road. We would simply have to extend the sensor mount and add more sensors. ### Hardware Our sensor array attached to the remote control vehicle along with the micro controller will accurately detect every obstacle and send the presence of a detected obstacle to a nearby smartphone. ### Software After receiving a signal from the micro controller, the smartphone app will mark the location of the detected obstacle using the location capabilities of the phone. This app in practice would show the location each obstacle detected to each user in the system, but our proof of concept will only mark the location on the users phone. |
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