FET11
Title: Innovative 3D machine vision technology for road surface and street furniture analysis
Contact: Melvyn.Smith@uwe.ac.uk
Project:
3D road surface texture affects many vehicle and road characteristics; which in turn determine the
comfort and safety of the driving experience. If an automated system were available that could
measure 3D road surface condition and quantify it with high accuracy and repeatability, this would
provide valuable information for optimising road surface quality and minimise costs by directing
road repair operations in the most efficient manner. Similar cost benefits could also be obtained for
maintenance of street furniture such as signs and lighting, where a combination of 3D and 2D
analysis could be used to evaluate physical condition and functional performance.
In the Centre for Machine Vision at UWE, a new technique has been developed and employed in
various applications for analysis of complex 3D surfaces and objects. This technique, known as
dynamic photometric stereo, is considered to be suitable to the analysis of road surfaces and street
furniture. There are however considerable technical challenges involved in relatively high-speed and
high-resolution 3D analysis of road surfaces and 3D/2D analysis of street furniture in real-world
potentially complex environments. This PhD will address these challenges, in the form of an initial
comprehensive literature review, followed by hardware and software development for
implementing a series of experiments for gathering relevant data from the road and surrounding
features. This data will then be analysed in depth and new pattern analysis and feature extraction
models developed for quantitative analysis of the road surface and street furniture. These models,
and a resulting demonstration system that will be developed as part of the PhD, will form the basis
of a three REF eligible journal papers as well as being employed by the collaborating company, WDM
(http://www.wdm.co.uk/), in their commercial development of road condition monitoring systems.
As such we not only believe this project to be highly topical but to also offer an excellent opportunity
for significant impact.