At a special presentation hosted by the European Space Agency (ESA), the Road Sounder project, led by Italian company ARPsoft, unveiled its new road assessment system – a smart, low-cost network designed to continuously monitor road pavement conditions.
Using accelerometers, inertial measurement units (IMUs) and GNSS positioning, the Road Sounder system transforms vehicle fleets into road surveyors capable of detecting cracks, surface roughness, potholes, and other defects in real time. The technology aggregates data into a centralized system for effective pavement management, enabling municipalities and service providers to optimize maintenance operations.
The network consists of multiple Road Sounder Cells (RSCs), small, lightweight devices equipped with sensors and GNSS receivers. The devices are deployed in vehicles, where they collect data such as road profiles and roughness, which is then transmitted to the cloud for analysis. Real-time data mining enables the prediction of pavement degradation, so public administrations can plan maintenance interventions more efficiently. The result is a reduction in repair costs and improved road quality and driving experience
With the cost of road reconstruction now often reaching €100,000 per kilometer, poor maintenance can hit hard in terms of a city’s expenses. In Rome, officials recently allocated €10 million to catalog and repair potholes on its 800 kilometers of roads.
Smart integration
A key advantage of the new system is its ability to analyze road roughness, estimate profiles, and detect defects with high accuracy, allowing precise forecasting of road maintenance needs. Road Sounder employs GNSS-aided inertial navigation system (INS) algorithms to ensure precise localization, even during poor GNSS conditions and signal outages. IMU integration adds robustness, ensuring reliable performance in tunnels, extreme urban canyons and other challenging environments.
Data from the new devices is processed in real time using MQTT, a lightweight messaging protocol tailored for IoT applications with limited bandwidth, ensuring efficient cloud-based data aggregation and road condition visualization. New and innovative, data-driven insights are also possible, which could lead to smarter, more timely interventions, further extending the lifetime of road infrastructure.
Project partners believe the market for Road Sounder services is large and growing. An agreement with a potential customer has been reached for the implementation of the new system in a fleet of vehicles already being used in maintenance services by the public administration in Rome.
The Road Sounder team is also planning new market actions targeting mid-sized cities with 1,000-20,000 inhabitants and covering road networks spanning 50-150 kilometers. Future developments could include the integration of artificial intelligence for improved, automated defect detection.
Road Sounder is funded under ESA’s NAVISP program, aimed at driving European industrial competitiveness and innovation in the positioning, navigation, and timing sector.
