GRD Journals- Global Research and Development Journal for Engineering | Volume 3 | Issue 6 | May 2018

ISSN: 2455-5703

Detection of Potholes, Humps and Measuring

Distance between Two Vehicles using Ultrasonic
Sensor and Accelerometer
Rahimraja Shaikh Patil Pallavi S
Department of Electronics & Telecommunication Department of Electronics & Telecommunication
KJ College of Engineering & Management Research Pune, KJ College of Engineering & Management Research Pune,
India India

Saraf Priyanka S Khan Aabid A

Department of Electronics & Telecommunication Department of Electronics & Telecommunication
KJ College of Engineering & Management Research Pune, KJ College of Engineering & Management Research Pune,
India India

Abstract
The most common problem that is faced in India is the maintenance of roads. The maintenance of roads mostly focusses on
improper roads which are due to potholes, humps etc. Our project mainly aims at detection of potholes and humps to avoid accidents
& at the same time damage to the vehicle. We have used ultrasonic sensors for measuring the depth & height of the road surface.
The data which are sensed by the sensors include the depth of the potholes & height of the hump & geographic location which is
to be already stored in the database. This information serves as a valuable source to the government authorities i.e PWD office and
vehicle drivers via GSM.
Keywords- Accelerometer, Ultrasonic Sensor, LCD, GSM, GPS

I. INTRODUCTION
India is one of the most popular country in the world and it has a fastest growing economy. Roads are the dominant means of
transportation in India today. However, in India most of the roads are narrow and congested. It has a poor surface quality and less
maintenance. Since we are in India driving is a breath holding, potentially threatening affair. Vehicle population has been increased
tremendously over the last two decades. Nowadays traffic congestion and road accidents are increasing mainly due to this
proliferation of vehicles.[4]. According to the survey report “Road Accidents in India, 2011”, a total of 1, 42,485 people had lost
their lives due to fatal road accidents by the ministry of road transport and highways[4]. These speed are unevenly distributed with
unscientific heights. Heavy rains and movement of heavy vehicles are the main reasons for the formation of potholes. This also
leads to major traumatic accidents and loss of human lives. The major benefit of our project will be in rainy season as this will be
very helpful to take an action to furnish better road quality, as the bad roads will be detected by our system .We mainly focus on
detecting pothole, Humps and vehicles which come across while driving.

II. PROBLEM STATEMENT

One of the increasing problem roads face are worsened road conditions .Unexpected hurdles on the roads may cause huge number
of accidents , Also because of bad road conditions fuel consumption of vehicles increases ,causing wastage of precious fuel. All
these reasons urge that it is important to get information of such bad road conditions, collect and distribute it to vehicles, which in
turn can warn the driver. Pothole detection system is a system that aims at collecting information, sending and storing it to the
PWD and warning the driver about the uneven roads and potholes in its path.

III. OBJECTIVES
The significance of our paper is to provide the best utilisation of our system to protect the users from accidents by sending the
information to the authorities which will simply maintain the roads which will thereby reduce the number of accidents and hence
cause no damage to humans nor vehicles.
This paper highlights the use of ultrasonic and accelerometer sensors in order to detect the potholes coming ahead the
vehicles and inform the user vehicle about the potholes via GSM SIM900A in order to take precautionary actions to avoid accident.
The accelerometer sensor is a three axis sensor which has a bandwidth of 0-50Hz and helps detect the potholes with its
tilt detection mode and hence is easy to use. [6]

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 Detection of Potholes, Humps and Measuring Distance between Two Vehicles using Ultrasonic Sensor and Accelerometer
(GRDJE/ Volume 3 / Issue 6 / 014)

IV. PROPOSED METHODOLOGY

In our project we are using PIC18F4520 which is a 40 pin microcontroller with 32k bytes program memory. Microcontroller is the
heart of the proposed system and is responsible for performing various tasks starting from processing all the sensor inputs to
alerting the driver.

A. Ultrasonic Sensor
HC-SR04 is an active ultrasonic sensor and contains a transmitter and a receiver. It is used to measure distance at which humps
are present in front of it. The ultrasonic sensor transmits high frequency sound waves and waits for the reflected wave to hit the
receiver. ULTRASONIC SENSOR- Ultrasonic sensor are basically used to measure the distances between the object place in front
of it and the sensor. The ultrasonic sensor works on Doppler Effect. [2.]
The distance is calculated based on the time taken by the ultrasonic pulse to travel a particular distance. HC-SR04 works
at 40 KHz frequency and can measure distance of objects in the range 2-400cm with a 15o angle of detection.

Fig. 1: Block Diagram of Transmitter

Fig. 2: Block Diagram of Receiver

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 Detection of Potholes, Humps and Measuring Distance between Two Vehicles using Ultrasonic Sensor and Accelerometer
(GRDJE/ Volume 3 / Issue 6 / 014)

B. GPS Receiver
The global positioning system GPS is a satellite navigation system and is used to capture geographic location, it is maintained by
the U.S. Government and is freely available to anyone who has a GPS receiver. It obtains the GPS information from satellites in
National Marine Electronics Association (NMEA) format. The NMEA has defined a standard format for GPS information, and is
followed by all satellites, the standard defines various codes such as GLL-Latitude/Longitude data, GSV-detailed satellite data and
RMC-minimum recommended data.

C. GSM Sim 800

Global standards for Mobile Communication (GSM) is a set of standards for Second Generation (2G) cellular networks .The
SIM800 is a complete Quad-band GSM/GPRS solution in a SMT type which can be embedded in the customer applications.
SIM800 supports Quad band 850/900/1800/1900MHz ,It can transmit voice, Sms and data information with low power
consumption .Featuring Bluetooth and Embedded AT it allows total cost savings and fast time-to-market for customer
applications.[2.]

D. Accelerometer
Accelerometer is a sensor which converts accelerations from motion or gravity to either analog or digital electrical signals.
The raw data set from the accelerometer is the acceleration of each axis in the units of gravitational force which is convertible to
other units also. The raw data is represented in a set of vectors .The acceleration data is collected from pothole and hump
respectively, the system collects three axis readings X Y &Z.[6.][7.]

E. LCD
The LCD display is a 16 characters, 2 line alphanumeric display .The LCD display requires data in serial format.

F. Buzzer
A buzzer or beeper is an audio signalling device, buzzer used in this project is an alarming device, Buzzer is an integrated structure
of electronic transducers ,DC power supply ,Active buzzer 5v rated power can be directly connected to a continues sound.

V. IMPLEMENTATION
The implementation section consists of the flowcharts for both sensing vehicle as well as user vehicles, both the flowcharts are as
shown below:

Fig. 3: Sensing vehicle flowchart

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 Detection of Potholes, Humps and Measuring Distance between Two Vehicles using Ultrasonic Sensor and Accelerometer
(GRDJE/ Volume 3 / Issue 6 / 014)

Fig. 4: user vehicle flowchart

VI. ALGORITHM
1) Start
2) Initialise the system peripherals
3) Initialise the GSM and GPS modules
4) Start the robot
5) Check the distance measured from Ultrasonic sensor
6) Check the ADXL335;x,y and z axis measurements
7) If distance goes high above reference level then pothole is detected
8) Stop the robot
9) Take instant value from the GPS location
10) Location is acquired through GPS and sent using GSM to PWD office
11) Take instant value from the GPS location
12) Location is sent through GSM using SMS to PWD office

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 Detection of Potholes, Humps and Measuring Distance between Two Vehicles using Ultrasonic Sensor and Accelerometer
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13) Start the robot

14) If values of 3 axis changes continuously then bad road is detected
15) Take instant value from GPS location
16) Location is acquired through GPS and sent using SMS to PWD office
17) Go to step 5
18) End.

VII. EXPECTED RESULT

Fig. 5: Transmitter of pothole detection system

Fig. 6: Pothole Detection System

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 Detection of Potholes, Humps and Measuring Distance between Two Vehicles using Ultrasonic Sensor and Accelerometer
(GRDJE/ Volume 3 / Issue 6 / 014)

VIII. CONCLUSION
The proposed system basically serves the following purposes: The proposed system will detect the potholes and humps on the road
and save the information in the server. The potholes are detected and its height and depth and size are measured using ultrasonic
sensors and accelerometer. The GPS is used to find the location of pothole .All the information is saved in the database. This timely
information helps recover the road as fast as possible. Also this system measures the distance between two vehicles to avoid road
accidents. [2]

IX. FUTURE SCOPE

An important aspect of our project is the maintenance of roads which will rapidly make our city a smart city and these developed
roads will lead to the safety of human life & this system can be used to benefit the people by using some high level technologies
and ideas for the increased development of the roads and prevention from accidents.

REFERENCE
[1] “Detection of Humps & potholes on road and notifying the same to the driver” MADHUMATHY P.SAURABH SINGH,SHIVAM SHUKLA,UNNI
KRISHNAN International Journal of management and applied science,ISSN:2394-7926 Volume-3,Issue-1, Special Issue-2,Jan-2017.
[2] "Intelligent Pothole Detection and notification system” NILAM KUMBHAR, DIPALI MHETRE , AMARINA MUJAWAR,S.T.KHOT, Department of
electronics and telecommunications ,Bharati Vidyapeth College of engineering for Women, pune, Maharashtra, India, DOI 10.4010/2016.798 ISSN 2321
3361C 2016 IJEC, Volume 6 Issue no.4.
[3] ”Automatic and Real time potholes and humps detection system using smartphones “ UPPARI SRINIVAS, VENTRAPRAGADA TEJU International Journal
of scientific Engineering and technology research ISSN 2319-8885 Vol.06, Issue.04 February -2017.
[4] [4] “Speed Control of Vehicle by Detection of Potholes and Humps” P.GURUSAMI1, M.ANUSHA2, N.DEVIPRIYA3, P.HARINI4, MD ASRAR UL
HAQUEC5 Assistant Professor, Department of EIE, Adhiyamaan College of Engineering, Hosur, Tamil Nadu, India1 UG Students , Department of EIE,
Adhiyamaan College of Engineering, Hosur, Tamil Nadu, India2,3,4,5, March 2016.
[5] “Pothole Detection System using Machine Learning on Android” ANIKET KULKARNI1, NITISH MHALGI2, SAGAR GURNANI3,Dr.NUPUR GIRI4,
V.E.S. Institute of Technology, Mumbai-74July 2014.
[6] “Vehicle Vibration Signal Processing for Road Surface Monitoring” HARIKRISHNAN P. M. and VARUN P.GOPI, August 15, 2017
[7] “Multi-lane Pothole Detection From Crowd Sourced Under Sampled Vehicle Sensor Data” V.K. Vijaya Kumar, Fellow, IEEE, Jinzhu Chen, Member Andrew
Fox, Member, IEEE, B, IEEE,and Fan Bai, Fellow, IEEE2017.

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