Williams-Peniel, Paul
Paul
Williams-Peniel
Presentation: 2026 ND EPSCoR Annual conference
October 20, 2026, Minot, North Dakota
Physics-Informed Smartphone Sensing for Network-Level Pavement Condition Assessment
Paul
Williams-Peniel
Doctoral Student
North Dakota State University
Eric Asa, PhD, Associate Professor, North Dakota State University; Noral Walker, PhD Student, North Dakota State University; Chidiebere Anastacia Ezeh, PhD Student, North Dakota State University; Bright Awuku, PhD, Civil Engineer, ULTEIG Engineers
Session
Concurrent Presentation Session B, Rhodes Room
Transportation agencies rely on specialized inertial profilers to measure pavement roughness. However, the high cost and operational requirements of these systems limit the frequency and coverage of network-level condition assessments. This study presents a low-cost pavement monitoring framework that integrates smartphone sensing, physics-informed neural networks (PINNs), and computer vision for scalable roadway condition evaluation. Implemented as a React Native application, the system collects synchronized accelerometer, gyroscope, GPS, and roadway video data using a vehicle-mounted smartphone during routine travel. To estimate pavement roughness, the PINN predicts the International Roughness Index (IRI) directly from smartphone measurements while incorporating standardized quarter-car dynamics through a physics-based loss function. By embedding the industry-standard Golden Car model, the framework constrains predictions to remain consistent with the vehicle-pavement interactions underlying conventional IRI measurements. Model performance was evaluated using a leakage-free validation strategy in which entire roadway links were excluded from training, providing a rigorous assessment of generalization to previously unseen road segments. At the agency reporting scale, the proposed framework achieved an R² of 0.76 and a mean absolute error of 13.9 in./mile for IRI estimation. To complement roughness assessment, a YOLOv8-based distress detection model identified cracks, potholes, and surface deformations from roadway video with a mAP@0.5 of 97.1%. Roughness estimates and detected distresses were integrated within a GIS-based web platform, enabling synchronized geospatial visualization of pavement conditions across roadway networks. Results demonstrate the potential of low-cost mobile sensing and physics-guided AI to support scalable pavement monitoring and infrastructure management.
