Mobile surveying system for road assets monitoring and management

Road assets' condition has a critical impact on road safety and efficiency. It is a big challenge to accurately and efficiently monitor and manage road assets. This paper proposes a mobile surveying system that is cost efficient and robust to acquire and manage road assets information in highly dynamic environments like highways and urban streets, where the data collection has previously been laborious and even dangerous for the staff performing the survey. Equipped with laser measurement systems, camera, proprioceptive sensors and novel sensor fusion algorithms; the proposed system can survey and manage road assets expeditiously. Laser sensors measure surroundings with range and remission data. Range data is processed to build up 3D model of surveyed objectives with position and attitude information from proprioceptive sensors. Remission data is used for extracting traffic lanes and signs on the roads. Each traffic lane's clearance of structures, like bridges and tunnels, is calculated and marked on the 3D model, and compared with the signs captured by the camera. Road surface condition is measured by both inertial and laser sensors. Any abnormal circumstance detected is reported automatically. The surveying results are presented in a user friendly interface and saved as videos for convenient data management. Experimental results of a prototype system demonstrate its performance for road assets monitoring and management.