Abstract: Evaluating the condition of pavements is an expensive, labour intensive, and time consuming process. Many traditional road evaluation methods utilize measurements taken in situ along with visual examinations and interpretations. Smartphone based pavement condition assessment is a non-destructive remote sensing method. An android based application named AndroSensor was used to collect data from various sensors present in smartphones such as accelerometers, gyroscopes etc. Smartphone was fixed over the dashboard of a car while collecting the data. The acceleration values obtained from accelerometers were analysed to find out its relation between the occurrence of major pavement events such as potholes, bumps, left turn, right turn etc. The relation between the acceleration values and normal braking, sudden braking etc. due to pavement distresses was also analysed. A JAVA program was coded to reduce the computations in finding the presence of these events on the pavements according to the corresponding acceleration values. International Roughness Index values for different road stretches were found out using roughometer III and the correlation between these values and the change in z axis acceleration values obtained from AndroSensor was analysed. It was found to be satisfactory. Hence, it was concluded that, although smartphone based method can never entirely replace traditional methods, they do provide an opportunity to reduce the number or size of areas requiring site visits or manual methods.

Keywords: AndroSensor, JAVA program, Pavement condition evaluation, Roughometer, Smartphone based pavement condition assessment.