Nericell: Rich Monitoring of Road and Traffic Conditions

using Mobile Smartphones

Presented by Abdelrhman Magdy

The Main Idea

• Monitoring road traffic condition in a developing

region.

• Nericell uses the accelerometer, microphone,

GSM radio, and/or GPS sensors in these phones to

detect potholes, bumps, braking, and honking.

The Main Achievements

• avoid the need for expensive and specialized

traffic monitoring infrastructure.

• avoid the need for CAN protocol in cars, which is

not present in most cars (e.g., the 3-wheeled

autorickshaws in India) [Translation: Toktok]

The Challenges

• complex road conditions (e.g., potholed roads),

chaotic traffic (e.g., a lot of braking and honking),

and a heterogeneous mix of vehicles (2-wheelers,

3-wheelers, cars, buses, etc.).

Pictures

Innovation

• triggered sensing, wherein a sensor that is

relatively inexpensive from an energy viewpoint

(e.g., cellular radio or accelerometer) is used to

trigger the operation of a more expensive sensor

(e.g., GPS or microphone).

• algorithms to virtually reorient a disoriented

accelerometer along a canonical set of axes and

then use simple threshold-based heuristics to

detect bumps and potholes, and braking