Vehicle Position Tracking During Load Response Testing and Automated Faultmeter Control Software Program

Principal Investigator(s):

Ahmed Tewfik, Former Professor, Electrical and Computer Engineering

Project summary:

The vehicle positing tracking subproject consisted of two sub-projects. The goal of the first sub-project was to develop a reliable method for collecting accurate load response test data regardless of the actual path followed by a test vehicle. Correct interpretation of the results of load response tests requires precise measurement of the relative position between sensors embedded into the pavement and the path followed by a test vehicle. The project team replaced the current laborious and error-prone vehicle localization process by a reliable automated system that determines the vehicle position relative to the pavement sensors with an accuracy of 2 cm or better using primarily real-time RTK-GPS data. The second sub-project was to develop automated faultmeter control software, compatible with LabView software, to control data collection by the MnROAD Georgia faultmeter and automate the transfer of the data to the MnROAD database. At the time, faultmeter data was recorded via a slow, manual error prone process. The software now works with the current MnROAD system.

Project details: