How smooth is your ride? Comparison of sensors and methods for surface quality assessment using IMUs

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 c...

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Main Authors: Moritz Beeking, Hannah Wies, Markus Steinmaßl, Karl Rehrl
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Technology and Society, Faculty of Engineering, LTH, Lund University 2024-12-01
Series:Traffic Safety Research
Subjects:
Online Access:https://tsr.international/TSR/article/view/26031
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author Moritz Beeking
Hannah Wies
Markus Steinmaßl
Karl Rehrl
author_facet Moritz Beeking
Hannah Wies
Markus Steinmaßl
Karl Rehrl
author_sort Moritz Beeking
collection DOAJ
description 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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institution Kabale University
issn 2004-3082
language English
publishDate 2024-12-01
publisher Technology and Society, Faculty of Engineering, LTH, Lund University
record_format Article
series Traffic Safety Research
spelling doaj-art-58c32935bb3346bfb31ae2b4be4635f52024-12-17T13:09:40ZengTechnology and Society, Faculty of Engineering, LTH, Lund UniversityTraffic Safety Research2004-30822024-12-01710.55329/guai2275How smooth is your ride? Comparison of sensors and methods for surface quality assessment using IMUsMoritz Beeking0https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7870-8127Hannah Wies1https://orcid.org/0009-0007-9169-1538Markus Steinmaßl2https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9407-9570Karl Rehrl3https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4052-5867Salzburg Research Forschungsgesellschaft mbH, AustriaSalzburg Research Forschungsgesellschaft mbH, AustriaSalzburg Research Forschungsgesellschaft mbH, AustriaSalzburg Research Forschungsgesellschaft mbH, Austria 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. https://tsr.international/TSR/article/view/26031cycling comfortinertial measurement unit (IMU)infrastructure assessmentsensor bikesurface roughness
spellingShingle Moritz Beeking
Hannah Wies
Markus Steinmaßl
Karl Rehrl
How smooth is your ride? Comparison of sensors and methods for surface quality assessment using IMUs
Traffic Safety Research
cycling comfort
inertial measurement unit (IMU)
infrastructure assessment
sensor bike
surface roughness
title How smooth is your ride? Comparison of sensors and methods for surface quality assessment using IMUs
title_full How smooth is your ride? Comparison of sensors and methods for surface quality assessment using IMUs
title_fullStr How smooth is your ride? Comparison of sensors and methods for surface quality assessment using IMUs
title_full_unstemmed How smooth is your ride? Comparison of sensors and methods for surface quality assessment using IMUs
title_short How smooth is your ride? Comparison of sensors and methods for surface quality assessment using IMUs
title_sort how smooth is your ride comparison of sensors and methods for surface quality assessment using imus
topic cycling comfort
inertial measurement unit (IMU)
infrastructure assessment
sensor bike
surface roughness
url https://tsr.international/TSR/article/view/26031
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