Smart Pothole Detector

  • Unique Paper ID: 203648
  • Volume: 12
  • Issue: 12
  • PageNo: 11767-11772
  • Abstract:
  • Road potholes are one of the primary contributors to road accidents, vehicle damage, traffic delays, and lost economic revenue for urban and rural transportation systems. Traditionally, potholes are inspected manually, which takes a lot of time and effort as well as is not very good for real-time monitoring. Automated systems utilize image processing, machine learning, or LiDAR but have a high cost of computation and are challenging to implement on a large scale. This paper describes a low-cost real-time Smart Pothole Detection System using an HC-SR04 ultrasonic sensor and an Arduino Uno R3 microcontroller. The system will continuously measure the distance from the vehicle to the road surface using ultrasonic waves. When the measured distance to the road surface increases rapidly and exceeds a predetermined “threshold” value, it identifies the irregularity as a pothole, cavity, crater, or hollow and generates a buzzer alert for the driver. By optionally integrating a GPS module, location-based logging of potholes occurs for future smart transportation applications. Experimental analysis indicates that the proposed system will detect approximately 95% of potholes with low false alarm rates and response times of less than 100 milliseconds. The proposed system provides an affordable, energy-efficient, and scalable method for intelligent road safety and smart infrastructure monitoring applications.

Copyright & License

Copyright © 2026 Authors retain the copyright of this article. This article is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

BibTeX

@article{203648,
        author = {Siddhi Maheshwari and Bhatki Honkalas and Shivendraraje Gawali and Karthik Salunke and Chaitanya Suryavanshi},
        title = {Smart Pothole Detector},
        journal = {International Journal of Innovative Research in Technology},
        year = {2026},
        volume = {12},
        number = {12},
        pages = {11767-11772},
        issn = {2349-6002},
        url = {https://ijirt.org/article?manuscript=203648},
        abstract = {Road potholes are one of the primary contributors to road accidents, vehicle damage, traffic delays, and lost economic revenue for urban and rural transportation systems. Traditionally, potholes are inspected manually, which takes a lot of time and effort as well as is not very good for real-time monitoring. Automated systems utilize image processing, machine learning, or LiDAR but have a high cost of computation and are challenging to implement on a large scale. This paper describes a low-cost real-time Smart Pothole Detection System using an HC-SR04 ultrasonic sensor and an Arduino Uno R3 microcontroller. The system will continuously measure the distance from the vehicle to the road surface using ultrasonic waves. When the measured distance to the road surface increases rapidly and exceeds a predetermined “threshold” value, it identifies the irregularity as a pothole, cavity, crater, or hollow and generates a buzzer alert for the driver. By optionally integrating a GPS module, location-based logging of potholes occurs for future smart transportation applications. Experimental analysis indicates that the proposed system will detect approximately 95% of potholes with low false alarm rates and response times of less than 100 milliseconds. The proposed system provides an affordable, energy-efficient, and scalable method for intelligent road safety and smart infrastructure monitoring applications.},
        keywords = {Pothole Detection, Ultrasonic Sensor, HC-SR04, Arduino Uno, Smart Transportation, Embedded Systems, GPS Module, Road Safety, Real-Time Monitoring, Smart Infrastructure.},
        month = {May},
        }

Cite This Article

Maheshwari, S., & Honkalas, B., & Gawali, S., & Salunke, K., & Suryavanshi, C. (2026). Smart Pothole Detector. International Journal of Innovative Research in Technology (IJIRT), 12(12), 11767–11772.

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