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Development and Analysis of Pothole detection and Alert based on NodeMCU

Conference Paper · February 2020

DOI: 10.1109/ic-ETITE47903.2020.347

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 2020 International Conference on Emerging Trends in Information Technology and Engineering (ic-ETITE)

Development and Analysis of

Pothole detection and Alert based on NodeMCU
2020 International Conference on Emerging Trends in Information Technology and Engineering (ic-ETITE) 978-1-7281-4142-8/20/$31.00 ©2020 IEEE 10.1109/ic-ETITE47903.2020.347

Etukala Jaswanth Reddy, Padhuri Navaneeth Reddy,Govindula Maithreyi,

M. Bharath Chandra Balaji, Santanu Kumar Dash, K. Aruna Kumari
Deptartment of Electronics and Communication Engineering
VNR Vignana Jyothi Institute of Engineering and Technology
Hyderabad, India
Abstract---Traffic congestion and accidents are mainly due to
pathetic condition of road. The most common form of distress
on such roads are potholes, which can compromise safety, and
result in vehicle damage. Repairing the roads on regular bases
will ensure the drivers safety and helps reduction in vehicle
damage. There are many methods existing for pothole
detection which use sophisticated equipment and algorithms.
Due to the huge data computation such processes are slow and
power consuming. In this paper, we propose an efficient depth-
based pothole detection technique without any high
computation and processing. In the proposed method we use
the depth calculated by ultrasonic sensor as a base for
detecting the pothole and there after its location is sent to mail.
The results indicate that this method can be used in
identification of potholes and maintaining the roads in proper
condition. Fig 1: Condition of roads with potholes.

Keywords—Node MCU, GPS module, Ultrasonic sensor,

IFTTT Webhooks. II. COMPONENTS USED IN THE PROPOSED SYSTEM

I. INTRODUCTION
The safety of a vehicle is the first priority while constructing
and maintaining a road. This safety is not assured when the
condition of road is deprived. Most of the roads in India are
congested with poor quality and maintenance needs are not
done as per the requirement. Increase in number of vehicles
has led to problems such as traffic congestion and increase
in the number of roads accidents. Potholes, formed due to
heavy rains and movement of heavy vehicles is also a reason
for accidents and loss of human lives. Maintenance
authorities need to regularly check the quality of the roads in
order for maintenance [1]. Detection of such potholes helps
the authorities to maintain the condition of roads and also
keep in track with its condition. The survey for such
maintaining analysis is done annually and time spent, cost
for such actions is huge [2]. This project helps to directly
detect a pothole and inform the maintenance authorities its
location through mail. This method is not an annual
procedure rather a continuous process, whenever pothole is
detected the location is directly sent [3]. This project is cost
efficient as the components used are of general basis and .
can be installed in any type of system or vehicle for it Fig 2: Block Diagram
working. The potholes are detected by using ultrasonic
sensor and the location (latitude and longitude values) are
given with the interfacing of GPS module and node MCU. A. Node MCU
The location is shared with the help of IFTTT Webhooks Node MCU consists of esp8266 wi-fi source module which
which is linked to the maintenance authority’s Gmail Id. is used for IOT purpose. The scripting langue used in
esp8266 is LUA. NODEMCU was created in short after the
release of esp8266. It consists of firmware which runs
mainly on the esp8266 wi-fi module. It is mainly used in the

978-1-7281-4141-1/$31.00 ©2020 IEEE

978-1-7281-4142-8/$31.00 ©2020 IEEE 1

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 2020 International Conference on Emerging Trends in Information Technology and Engineering (ic-ETITE)

projects of arduino and raspberry pi. It consists of memory module is on, it receives the signal for the satellite and
OF 128K Bytes and storage of 4Mbytes. The operating calculates the time to receive the signal from the satellites
system present in node MCU is XTOS. Which the main then the GPS receiver calculates the distance between the
function of node MCU is used for security operating receiver and satellite. In order to calculate the distance, the
functions. satellite transmits some pseudocode and it is received by the
GPS receiver. Then the receiver compares the signal and
their difference is the travelling time. Similarly, the GPS
receiver continue this procedure with nearby satellites and
calculates the distance by using trilateration method. The
GPS receiver gives the value in NMEA (National Marine
Electronics Association) format. It transmits the signal to
the Arduino with the baud rate of 9600.

Fig 3: Node MCU

B. Ultrasonic Sensor
Ultrasonic sensor is a device used to calculate distance by
measuring time lapse between the sender and receiver. The
sender uses the waves which are inaudible to human in
range of above 20khz. These waves are known as ultrasonic
waves or ultrasonic pulses. The sender transmits the
ultrasonic pulses(40khz) which gets reflected by the
obstacle or receiver, by the time the sensor calculates the
time taken to get back the reflected pulse. Then distance is
measured by multiplying the time with the speed of pulse. It
is also known as proximity sensor which are used for anti-
collision detection like presence, distance, level, position. Fig 5: GPS Module
ultrasonic sensors using single transducer for transmitting
D. Server Database
sound wave and receiving the echo pulse. These are reliable
and can be used in any lighting environment. The server database usually stores the data that is sent using
the micro controller. In this system we are using the e-mail
as an alert generating source which is the destination of the
data sent from the micro-controller. So, the database for this
system will be the database of the G-mail provided by
Google.

III. METHODOLOGY

In this paper, we describe the software system design,

program techniques, and system approaches used in the
development of programming the microprocessor in the
pothole detection system. The software program is
responsible for accepting data and commands, executing
different commands, and supporting data Input/output ports.
This paper discusses the software in terms of routines and
subroutines. The software mainly consists of two parts, one
Fig 4: Ultrasonic sensor is control part, and the other is triggering part. It is intended
to give a general idea of program flow and implementation
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Distance=[ ] (1) A. Arduino IDE
૛
In this system Arduino software from Arduino developer is
C. GPS Module used to develop program for many Arduino based devices.
Arduino IDE supports vast number of boards which need to
The GPS module is used to calculation the position of the
be downloaded and imported to the IDE. Node MCU is one
object. The GPS receiver is the satellite based system which
such board that need to be imported and the program can be
uses the satellite and the ground receiver in order to
written in extensive languages like C, C++, Java, etc. It
calculate the position of the object [4]. When the GPS

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 2020 International Conference on Emerging Trends in Information Technology and Engineering (ic-ETITE)

provides the workspace and extensible plug-in’s so as to gives us the distance from sensor to the obstacle. We are
code in an uncomplicated manner. intended to calculate the depth, in order to calculate the
depth of pothole we will reduce the calculated distance by
the ground clearance level of the system or vehicle [5]. The
depth is given by

Depth = Present distance – Ground clearance

D. Pothole Detection
From the above calculations we are able to get the depth of
the pothole. If the Depth is zero then there will be no
pothole existed at that particular place. If the Depth is
greater than zero then the GPS module sends the location
the micro-controller. The GPS Module plays a key role to
get the location co-ordinates. The receiver pin in initiated
with the help of Arduino IDE and the GPS Module has a
default transmitter pin as discussed. After getting the co-
ordinates they must be processed in the required format as
specified in the libraries present in the IDE.

Fig 6: Laboratory system developed for pothole detection

Signal Received
Fig 5: Flow Chart

B. NodeMCU
Initially Node MCU [3] should be connected to a Wi-Fi
network so that it can have access to internet and can be able Fig 7: Principle for detection of pothole
to connect to the http client, in this system our http client is
the webhooks server through which we need send the E. Sharing the location
location information. In order to achieve sharing the location the major role is
played by the server, to connect the device to the sever we
C. Calculating Depth need to avail a service which acts as an intermediary layer
As shown in the flow chart we get the time taken for the between the microcontroller and the server [6]. In this
ultrasonic wave to hit the obstacle and reflect back to the system IFTTT is acting as an intermediary platform which is
sensor, this information is sent to Node MCU and using the connecting the micro controller and the server platform. The
equation distance is calculated. IFTTT platform provides a unique API key for each and
Distance = time taken * (speed of ultrasonic wave /2) every event occurring which speaks the security aspect of
the system. In this platform the micro-controller and the G-

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 2020 International Conference on Emerging Trends in Information Technology and Engineering (ic-ETITE)

mail must be integrated to as receive an E-mail. This event

should be triggered using the micro-controller using the
values of latitude, longitude and the depth of the pothole.
The IFTTT also consist of many other services and in that
we are going to use webhooks. The IFTTT using those
values sends an E-mail consisting the required information.

Fig 9: Real life application of system attached to a bike for

detection of pothole (absence of pothole)

Fig 8: Location sent to mail

III. EXPERIMENTATION

The working model proposed in this paper as shown in the

Fig 6 is tested using the system with artificial potholes and
after getting the fruitful results it is fixed to the bike. The
experiment is carried in a simulated environment where the
microcontroller module is fixed to the system and the
threshold value was configured to 3 cm. During the test it
was found that the microcontroller module worked as Fig 10: Real life application of system attached to a bike for
expected to identify potholes. The values which we got are detection of pothole (in the presence of pothole)
tabulated in Table-1.
These tabulated values are sent to the cloud (as specified the IV CONCLUSION
cloud is Gmail database). The snapshot of the values is
shown in the Fig 8. In this paper we proposed an effective automatic detection
of potholes using depth based analysis. The paper uses the
Table-1 depth calculated using ultrasonic sensor and an algorithm in
the detection procedure. The depth calculated is compared
S No Height/Depth Latitude Longitude with the ground clearance of that system so as to identify the
(cm) pothole position and depth by which we can depict the
danger accompanied with it. The location is shared using
1. 5.3 17.3978 78.5027 GPS module and IFTTT server to the mails of the
maintenance authorities who can take the necessary actions.
This system can help the maintenance authorities with a
2. 3.6 17.5377 78.3841 regular and cost effective approach towards the
identification of pathetic road conditions.
3. 4.2 17.4705 78.5632 This model can be extended to a greater extent by using
vehicle to vehicle interaction within a specific zone where
everyone can be informed about the pothole and adjust their
4. 4.8 17.4701 78.5631 speeds accordingly for their safety.

REFERENCES

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Detection on Indian Roads Using Mobile sensors” IEEE 8th
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[2] S.Barnwal “ Vehicle Behavior analysis for uneven road surface
detection” IEEE 18th International Conference on Intelligent
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 2020 International Conference on Emerging Trends in Information Technology and Engineering (ic-ETITE)

[3] S.V.Pravati, K.Thenmozhi “IOT accelerated Wi-fi bot controlled via [6] Amitha Terish, Shiji Johnson T D, Sinu Valsan, Sooraj P, Indrasena N
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