A Survey of Accelerometer-Based Techniques for Road Anomalies Detection and Characterization

In this paper, we present a decade survey of accelerometer-based sensor approaches proposed in literature for road surface conditions monitoring and anomalies detection. The main objective is to evaluate the performance of different documented accelerometer-based road anomaly detection techniques proposed, towards identifying their various strengths and weaknesses. We observed that a major challenge associated with these approaches, is in detection of the road anomaly and characterising it into potholes or speed-bumps directly from the irregularly fluctuating measured signals by the accelerometer. This drawback limits the efficacy of the proposed variants of accelerometer sensor-based approaches when used for road condition monitoring. Thus, future investigation will factor these in the design process towards aiding the choice of favourable techniques for future vehicle deployments by vehicle technology developers, as well as improvement for future unmanned vehicles. Furthermore, several open research issues that need to be addressed in designing and developing a robust accelerometer-based road monitoring system are highlighted in the conclusion.