Automatic Measurement Of Pavement Groove And Pothole Based On 3D Laser Imaging Technology

With the growth of roadway mileage in our country,pavement rehabilitation and maintenance is emerged as an important work for transportation agencies.Rigid pavement and flexible pavement are the major types for pavement construction.Pavement groove and pothole distress are strongly related with traffic safety and riding comfort.However,the widely used instruments for pavement survey are based on2 D image technology,which cannot be applied for pavement groove and pothole distress survey.Due to the limitations of the traditional method,3D laser imaging technology is improved and applied for pavement survey in this study.A 3D pavement surveying system is developed based on 3D laser imaging technology.The applications of the 3D pavement surveying system on pavement groove measurement and pothole detection are provided in this study:(1)Physical block method is used for system parameters.(2)An improved gray-gravity model is utilized for extracting laser center with sub-pixel level.The effects of background and reflectivity of pavements materials are analyzed,and the robustness of the proposed method is improved.(3)The fully matched 2D and 3D laser images are collected by the 3D pavement surveying system.(4)The algorithms for pavement groove measurement and pavement pothole detection are developed based on the collected 3D point cloud data and standards.A validation test is conducted based on laboratory experiments.The results of validation test show for pavement groove measurement the minimum value of intra-group and inter-group variation coefficient are2.6% and 0.6%,and the maximum value of that are 10.4% and 10.2% by referring to ground truth.For pavement pothole detection,the errors in pothole depth and area measurement are 5.1% and 5.4% by referring to ground truth.The results imply that the proposed algorithms are reliable and accurate on pavement groove measurement and pothole detection.Finally,two road sections in Fuzhou are selected for case study in this study.This study provides the methods for pavement groove and pothole distress survey,which are helpful for promoting the intelligent maintenance and management of roadways.