[sarathlal]

Jaguar Land Rover announced that it is researching a new connected car technology that will allow a vehicle to identify the location and severity of potholes, broken drains and manhole covers, and then share this data in real-time via the cloud with other vehicles and with road authorities to help them prioritise repairs.

This is the concept which we all wished for!

If a car can receive a warning from another vehicle about severe potholes or broken manholes ahead, then drivers would be able to slow down and avoid the danger - or the car could adjust suspension settings to reduce the impact and smooth the ride.

They even are exploring the possibility of using the collected data for effective road repairs.

Video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NPiynbknYVE

Source: JLR news room.

[alpha1]

This is a superb idea - using cloud to store real time data about potholes.
I just hope that the road authorities actually warm up to this concept.
... and this cloud does not stay closed to JLR's ecosystem.

This would be so much useful on India's terrible highways.

[DerAlte]

LOL Not applicable for India I guess.
* With Indian pot hole density (pot holes per sq.m.), the data will completely swamp their cloud-based servers. Even with the small number of JLR vehicles in India
* It is not difficult to predict pot-holes in India - just wait for monsoon. Even though the weather guys can't predict rainfall even if their life depends on it, road users can predict appearance of pot-holes with absolute certainty
* If cars receive warnings for potholes ahead, it will be really amusing to see all cars doing slalom on a road (like F1 cars warming up tyres)
* Q1: how many JLR vehicles would be required to completely map, say, Bangalore?
* Q2: How will it differentiate between potholes, and holes filled with soil and bricks?

[libranof1987]

This is quite fascinating! Waze allows drivers to post road conditions; this technology lets cars do everything.

Wonder how seemless the information relay will be; we wouldn't want drivers to start becoming paranoid and swerving left and right to avoid obstacles.

The most significant part of this technology, according to me, is relaying road condition to authorities.

[GTO]

Originally Posted by alpha1

and this cloud does not stay closed to JLR's ecosystem.

Originally Posted by DerAlte

how many JLR vehicles would be required to completely map, say, Bangalore?

Truly.

I can't think of anything better than the widely adopted Google Maps. Every smartphone today has a g-sensor. Thus, if 10 smartphones get a jolt at exactly the same spot, it's obvious there is a big pothole there. Similarly, it should be very easy to mark speed-breakers & bad roads automatically. Why depend on user input when it can be marked automatically?

[The Rationalist]

Share the data with road authorities and get it repaired soon! Hope this is not some joke! As if the authorities will do something. The problem lies in the very foundation of how things get done here. I know PWD contractors, who say that with the level of corruption present ,it is a miracle that some roads last few years! Most of our roads needs to be relaid from scratch if we are serious about having durable roads.

[DerAlte]

Originally Posted by GTO

... if 10 smartphones get a jolt at exactly the same spot, it's obvious there is a big pothole there. Similarly, it should be very easy to mark speed-breakers & bad roads automatically. Why depend on user input when it can be marked automatically?

I think JLR intends to do it the way you describe - the instrumentation is in-built into the cars. No manual user input required. ABS sensor has a 3-axis accelerometer, and there are multiple sensors in a modern car (at least 3). They also intend to use camera input for automatically sensing / recording potholes, though that could give many false positive results.

The REAL problem is not instrumentation, but geo-coordinate accuracy. The current best extrapolated accuracy is 1m (~3'). Native accuracy is less than that. The +/- 1m accuracy is just not good enough for pothole avoidance, which are always generally less an 1m in size (despite journalistic / caricatured expressions of "potholes large enough to swallow a car"). Speedbreaker warnings could tolerate that, since one has to slow down well before that.