Skip to main content

BumpRecorder measures road roughness via smartphone

BumpRecorder of Japan will be at the 2015 ITS World Congress with an innovative system that can evaluate road roughness, using only a smartphone. A user simply drives a passenger car with BumpRecorder installed on a smartphone and it will record vehicle vibration without the need for any special equipment.
October 8, 2015 Read time: 2 mins

BumpRecorder of Japan will be at the 2015 ITS World Congress with an innovative system that can evaluate road roughness, using only a smartphone.

A user simply drives a passenger car with BumpRecorder installed on a smartphone and it will record vehicle vibration without the need for any special equipment.

Recorded data is uploaded to the BumpRecorder Web server - road roughness to level 2 IRI (International Roughness Index) and original bump index will calculate in 5-10 minutes, and it will be displayed via mapping on the web map window.

The company states that BumpRecorder does not require calibration driving before actual roughness measurement driving gets under way. This is because vehicle vibration specification is analysed automatically using recorded acceleration data. The company claims that the class 2 IRI values provided by the system are stable, even if vehicle type and driving speeds are different.

The BumpRecorder App for Android smartphone is free to download from Google Play. There is a data analysing fee which is a fixed amount for a management area and within that area, measurement distance is unlimited.

Related Content

  • Temporary traffic monitoring with Bluetooth and wi-fi
    May 31, 2013
    David Crawford reviews developments in temporary ITS. Widespread take-up of technologies such as Bluetooth and wi-fi are encouraging the emergence of more sophisticated, while still cost effective, ITS responses to the traffic issues posed by temporary road situations such as work zones and special events. Andy Graham of traffic solutions specialists White Willow Consulting says: “A machine-to-machine radio link is far easier and cheaper than reading characters on a plate.” There can be other plusses. Tech
  • Vehicular networking architecture for local road weather services
    August 19, 2015
    The Finnish Meteorological Institute is currently testing two-way delivery of local weather data as Timo Sukuvaara explains. Road weather information is one of the key ways in which ITS can help reduce traffic accidents and fatalities – which is why the Finnish Meteorological Institute (FMI) has long provided road weather services. Now, the CoMoSeF (Cooperative Mobility Services of the Future) project has been developing communication methodologies to deliver road weather services directly to vehicles and g
  • Reducing congestion with Tomtom's historical traffic data
    December 5, 2012
    Historical traffic data provided by TomTom is being used by the local government in Spain’s Basque region to reduce road congestion at less cost. Old habits die hard. Photos from as far back as the 1930s show people counting cars by the roadside in order to provide congestion data to those running road networks. Today, such techniques are still used, albeit augmented by a range of automation technologies such as inductive loops, infra-red sensors and number plate recognition. Even with these advances, howe
  • Travel information is heading towards smartphones
    January 30, 2012
    Travel information services are undergoing a step change as rapid increase in sales of smartphones brings ITS technology to consumers' fingertips. A virtuous circle of expanding capability is under way in traffic and travel information services, promising much for drivers and reduction of road congestion. A recent rapid rise in sales of smartphones has boosted numbers of vehicles carrying GPS enabled devices and so brought expansion of traffic data available for analysis and dissemination. Greater numbers o