Pavement type and wear condition classification from tire cavity acoustic measurements with artificial neural networks.

Tire road noise is the major contributor to traffic noise, which leads to general annoyance, speech interference, and sleep disturbances. Standardized methods to measure tire road noise are expensive, sophisticated to use, and they cannot be applied comprehensively. This paper presents a method to automatically classify different types of pavement and the wear condition to identify noisy road surfaces. The methods are based on spectra of time series data of the tire cavity sound, acquired under normal vehicle operation. The classifier, an artificial neural network, correctly predicts three pavement types, whereas there are few bidirectional mis-classifications for two pavements, which have similar physical characteristics. The performance measures of the classifier to predict a new or worn out condition are over 94.6%. One could create a digital map with the output of the presented method. On the basis of these digital maps, road segments with a strong impact on tire road noise could be automatically identified. Furthermore, the method can estimate the road macro-texture, which has an impact on the tire road friction especially on wet conditions. Overall, this digital map would have a great benefit for civil engineering departments, road infrastructure operators, and for advanced driver assistance systems.