DMap: A low-cost distributed mapping concept for future road asset management

Road assets including road signs and utility poles are among the objects that are closely monitored by government bodies and transportation authorities in many countries. This paper presents a new approach to collect and analyse the information needed for road asset management and other digital cartography applications. Instead of using dedicated surveying vehicles, skilled drivers and high quality sensors that are common for traditional data collection, it envisions an infra-structure in which the data collection is done through cheap sensors that mainstream consumer cars can host in the near future. In order to investigate the new design, a prototype sensor named dSensor has been developed, each to be mounted on public transport vehicles, to collect information from the road scene. Each dSensor has three cameras, wireless modem, Global Positioning Systems (GPS), accelerometer, gyroscope, magnetometer and a laptop. A collection of vehicles equipped with dSensors and a server constitute the distributed mapping system called dMap for road asset management. The dMap design supports many features of an ideal road asset find and replace management system and in comparison to similar solutions or concepts for road asset management, the dMap is cost effective with high quality information particularly on matters such as update rate.