By Katishi Maake
Trib Live
The city of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University are working together to employ technology to find rugged roadways for repair.
Christoph Mertz, senior project scientist in CMU’s Robotics Institute, is developing a computer program to detect potholes, cracks and other irregularities in roads. Mounted on the windshield of a car, a camera captures images of the street and measures the severity of potholes and cracks.
Mertz said his program is cheaper than the laser and camera technology PennDOT uses to assess road conditions and more accurate and time-efficient than the city’s manual inspections because the devices can be mounted on garbage trucks, buses and other vehicles traversing city streets.
“Because it’s so inexpensive, you can put it in many vehicles,” he said. “While I drive around, I can record data. That way, I don’t have to pay an extra person to do that.”
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