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Event Detection in the Terrain Surface

Event Detection is a process of identifying terrain flatness from which localized events such as potholes in the terrain surface can be found and is an important tool in pavement health monitoring and vehicle performance inspection. Repeated detection of terrain surfaces over an extended period of time can be used by highway engineers for long term road health monitoring. An accurate terrain map can allow maintenance personnel for identifying deterioration in road surface for immediate correction. Additionally, knowledge of the events in terrain surface can be used to predict the performance the vehicles would experience while traveling over it.

Event detection is composed of two processes: event edging and stitching edges to events. Edge detection is a process of identifying significant localized changes in the terrain surface. Many edge detection methods have been designed capable of capturing edges in terrain surfaces. Gradient searches are frequently used in image processing to recover useful information from images. The issue with using a gradient search method is that it returns deterministic values resulting in edges which are less precise. In order to predict the precision of the terrain surface, the individual nodal probability densities must be quantified and finally combined for the precision of terrain surface. A Comparative Nodal Uncertainty Method is developed in this work to detect edges based on the probability distribution of the nodal heights within some local neighborhood. Edge stitching is developed to group edges to events in a correct sequence from which an event can be determined finally. / Master of Science

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:VTETD/oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/71792
Date14 July 2016
CreatorsDong, Weixiao
ContributorsMechanical Engineering, Ferris, John B., Hendricks, Scott L., West, Robert L.
PublisherVirginia Tech
Source SetsVirginia Tech Theses and Dissertation
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeThesis
FormatETD, application/pdf
RightsIn Copyright, http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

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