How smooth is your ride? Comparison of sensors and methods for surface quality assessment using IMUs
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.55329/guai2275Keywords:
cycling comfort, inertial measurement unit (IMU), infrastructure assessment, sensor bike, surface roughnessAbstract
As a major component of riding comfort, surface roughness has a significant impact on peoples' decision to ride bicycles. Riding comfort is most commonly derived from accelerations measured by inertial measurement units (IMUs). However, roughness metrics from different works are not directly comparable as no ‘benchmark data’ exists. This work aims at alleviating this problem by comparing several well-established methods from literature on the same data. Furthermore, to quantify the effect of different sensor systems, for each test run data from both a smartphone and an industrial grade IMU were collected. To compare the derived roughness measurements, the reliability and stability of each sensor-method combination is calculated using non-parametric statistics. The results indicate handlebar mounted smartphones to be sufficient for surface roughness assessment. Furthermore, the selected roughness calculation method has the biggest impact on resulting assessments, above the impacts of both sensor and analyzed segment length. Based on the results, recommendations for surface roughness assessment are provided in the conclusion.
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Author Biographies
Moritz Beeking, Salzburg Research Forschungsgesellschaft mbH, Austria
Moritz Beeking received his master’s degree in computer science with a minor in physics and a specialization on cognitive systems and robotics in 2021 from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) in Karlsruhe, Germany. Currently he works as a data scientist in the Mobility and Transport analysis group at Salzburg Research in Salzburg, Austria. His research focuses on the processing of data collected by sensor-equipped bicycles, especially using neural network based perception methods for LiDAR data.
CRediT contribution: Conceptualization, Formal analysis, Investigation, Methodology, Software, Writing—original draft.
Hannah Wies, Salzburg Research Forschungsgesellschaft mbH, Austria
Hannah Wies received the B.Sc. degree in geography from the University of Freiburg, Germany, in 2018, and the M.Sc. degree in applied physical geography and mountain research from the University of Graz, Austria, in 2022. Since 2022, she has been working as a researcher in the Mobility and Transport analytics group at Salzburg Research, Austria. She focuses on automated and connected mobility as well as active mobility including the collection and analysis of cycling data.
CRediT contribution: Investigation, Methodology, Visualization, Writing—review & editing.
Markus Steinmaßl, Salzburg Research Forschungsgesellschaft mbH, Austria
Markus Steinmaßl earned his B.Sc. degree in mathematics in 2018 and his M.Sc. degree in data science in 2020, both from the Paris Lodron Universität Salzburg, Austria. Since 2018 he works for the Mobility and Transport analytics department of Salzburg Research in Salzburg, Austria. His research interests lie in processing and analysing traffic participants’ movement data on different scales, including floating car data on a national scale to high-frequency trajectories acquired by stationary object trackers at intersections.
CRediT contribution: Formal analysis, Methodology, Visualization, Writing—review & editing.
Karl Rehrl, Salzburg Research Forschungsgesellschaft mbH, Austria
Karl Rehrl holds a diploma degree in computer science from the University of Linz, Austria and a doctoral degree in geo-information from the Technical University of Vienna, Austria. He is heading the Mobility and Transport Analytics (MTA) research group at Salzburg Research, an applied research institute specialized in the field of Motion Data Intelligence. His research interests are in analysing and interpreting motion data in the field of mobility & transport, with an emphasis on Trajectory Data and Cooperative Services. Karl Rehrl has 20+ years of experience in initiating and heading applied research projects and pilot demonstrations and published 70+ scientific articles. He is an editorial board member of the Journal of Location Based Services and the International Journal on Geographic Information Science.
CRediT contribution: Conceptualization, Funding acquisition, Supervision, Writing—review & editing.
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Copyright (c) 2024 Moritz Beeking, Hannah Wies, Markus Steinmaßl, Karl Rehrl
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
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Bundesministerium für Klimaschutz, Umwelt, Energie, Mobilität, Innovation und Technologie
Grant numbers GZ 2021-0.641.557
