Detecting Road Irregularities by Image Enhancements and Thresholding

Significant steps have been made towards driverless cars in the last couple of years. Nowadays car’s often posses cameras. They are able to alert the driver in the event of a not signalized lane change, follow lane markers, detect weather phenomena like fog, snow, rain, sun glaring, automatic video cruise control, etc. Al such behaviors enhance the driving pleasure. Detecting potholes and/or debris on the road and assessing their position relative to the car wheels in order to change the suspension properties seems right around the corner. This paper introduces a mechanism used to process the pavement images to detect potholes and or road defects. Such detection done by private cars may reduce the Road Service Department’s expense if submitted to them in an organized manner. Detecting a pothole in a succession of images allows tracking and wheel-hitting estimation. Such way, the control system is able to instruct the car’s suspension regarding this matter.