Integrated Low-Cost LiDAR and GNSS for Road Condition Survey

Road condition surveys continue to incur significant expenses and provide considerable complexity. Due to the excessive costs, several transportation agencies refrain from gathering annual pavement condition assessments for most of their road network. Smartphone devices with LiDAR technology are a cost-effective alternative to remote sensing, with possible applications for various fields. The Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) does not require pre-processing of data to obtain coordinates (x, y, and z). However, the acquisition of digital models still requires high costs. The objective of this study is to evaluate the usefulness of the Low-Cost LiDAR and GNSS for road maintenance, especially 3D visualization of damage to the asphalt road surface, coordination of damage, and calculation of the volume of damage. As a result, the 3D visualization still looks rough. The results of measuring the volume of road damage (path holes) with iPhone devices are close to the original volume (with a difference/error of approximately 2.11%). Low-cost LiDAR and GNSS present a new alternative method in Road Condition Survey (RCS) that can produce 3d visuals and calculate volume damage area according to conditions that are needed as an input for the budgeting model, which is more cost and time-effective compared to existing Road Condition Survey (RCS) methods such as TLS, TS, and HMLS. LiDAR iPhone devices offer advantages in accessibility (standard device availability), usability, integrated data processing, comfortable handling, easy deployment, and time efficiency.