A Linux based platform for real-time scanning laser rut measurements

The thesis is about developing an embedded computer system to provide solution to one of the common problems in Transportation Engineering: Measuring the Rut of the road. This thesis is a result of the project "Development of Real-Time Rut Measurement System Using the Scanning Laser" for Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT), Project 1782. Rut measurements using the scanning laser system in TxDOT Project 1782 involved a non real-time multi step manual process. The research involves remodeling the embedded computer system to function as a real-time system that performs the scanning of the road as well as analysis of the scanned road data in real-time. The solution implements an efficient mechanism to identify the rut on the road. This splits the whole rigorous procedure and delegates the responsibility of each part to different pieces of hardware and thus achieving parallelism. In addition to providing a real-time solution to the problem, the research involves the introduction of time signal and hence providing the scans to be referenced with respect to time instead of distance.