Nericell: Rich Monitoring of Road and Traffic Conditions using Mobile Smartphones

1. Presented by Abdelrhman Magdy Nericell: Rich Monitoring of Road and Traffic Conditionsusing Mobile Smartphones

2. The Main Idea • Monitoring road traffic condition in a developing region. • Nericell uses the accelerometer, microphone, GSM radio, and/or GPS sensors in these phones to detect potholes, bumps, braking, and honking.

3. The Main Achievements • avoid the need for expensive and specialized traffic monitoring infrastructure. • avoid the need for CAN protocol in cars, which is not present in most cars (e.g., the 3-wheeled autorickshaws in India) [Translation: Toktok]

4. The Challenges • complex road conditions (e.g., potholed roads), chaotic traffic (e.g., a lot of braking and honking), and a heterogeneous mix of vehicles (2-wheelers, 3-wheelers, cars, buses, etc.).

5. Pictures

6. Innovation • triggered sensing, wherein a sensor that is relatively inexpensive from an energy viewpoint (e.g., cellular radio or accelerometer) is used to trigger the operation of a more expensive sensor (e.g., GPS or microphone). • algorithms to virtually reorient a disoriented accelerometer along a canonical set of axes and then use simple threshold-based heuristics to detect bumps and potholes, and braking