Detection and localization of potholes in thermal images using deep neural networks

A pothole is a depression caused on roads due to seepage of water into soil structure or weight of continuously moving traffic. This not only damages the suspension of the vehicles but is also a prime reason for road accidents worldwide. This necessitates the need to develop an efficient automatic pothole detection system which can assist concerned authorities for timely repair and maintenance of the roads. This paper proposes a novel approach of bounding box based pothole localization from thermal images using deep neural networks. The modified ResNet34-single shot multibox detector gives an average precision of 74.53% whereas modified ResNet50-RetinaNet model provides 91.15% precision. The results obtained by the proposed modified ResNet50-RetinaNet model are the state-of-the-art results for localization of potholes using thermal images. In real-world scenarios such a system can assist relevant authorities to judge the severity of road damage and take appropriate effective measures accordingly.