Enabling Large-Scale Road Data Acquisition with an Easy-to-Install and Sustainable Setup

In this paper, we propose an easy-to-install and sustainable setup for BigRoad, a system that supports driving and road data acquisition using COTS devices such as smartphones and IMUs. The in-vehicle setup includes energy harvesting modules and a low power motion-based switch to keep the system running for a sufficiently long time without human operations. The device calibration mechanism makes the system independent of vehicle models, steering wheel positions and IMU placements. The system could further leverage infrastructures in the vehicle to design an energy-efficient method for unusual events detection.