DEVELOPMENT OF AN INTEGRATED SYSTEM FOR MAPPING ROAD 
WIDTH USING DIGITAL VIDEO AND GLOBAL POSITIONING SYSTEM. 
Shanmugam Ganeshkumar, Dr. Kiyoshi HONDA, Prof. Shunji MURAI 
Space Technology Research and Application Program 
Asian Institute of Technology 
THAILAND 
stb87175@,ait.ac.th 
KEY WORDS: Road Mapping, Digital Video, Global Positioning System, Road Survey 
and Geographic Information System. 
ABSTRACT 
This paper presents an conceptual design of a system to extract the road width information from processing 
digital video images and integrating it with the ROMDAS for further road data. The global positioning 
system provides the necessary coordinate information, which has been integrated into the system as well. A 
new concept of image database for image processing for extracting road with and to be used with the 
geographic information system for visualization has also been discussed in brief. 
1 INTRODUCTION 
Automatic Road Width extraction in modern 
surveying still remains a challenge. Though 
sophisticated vehicles like ARAN 1 are 
available for the same purpose but they are 
out of reach of most of the agencies which 
undertake and need of such information 
considering the cost. The real time 
processing capability of the system to 
provide the information in real-road 
environments due to complex and diverse 
nature of scene further accentuates the 
process of extraction. Methods of region 
extraction or fusion of region and edge have 
been adopted in some other ALV 
(Autonomous Land Vehicle) or UGV 
(Unmanned Ground Vehicle) system to 
achieve robust performance.(put the 
reference here). This paper discussed the 
conceptualization of a new system to extract 
road width information through processing 
the digital video image (DV) and enabling 
Global Positioning through integrating with 
1 ARAN- Automatic Road Analyzer, 
the Road Measurement and Data 
Acquisition System [ROMDAS 2 ] for further 
collection of road data. This would provide 
us with a complete system for low-end road 
survey. 
2 SYSTEM ARCHITECTURE 
The conceptual system architecture has been 
shown in Figure 1. The hardware of the 
system consists of digital video camera, 
ROMDAS hardware interface and interface 
devices to link with computer. Essentially 
the system consists of two components 
mobile and office. The mobile component as 
the name suggests it consist of the roving 
ROMDAS hardware interface which 
connects the computer (Sharp Laptop in our 
case) to the vehicle's speedometer sensor 
and bump integrator for sensing road 
roughness, (see figure 2) 
2 ROMDAS - Road Measurement and Data 
Acquisition System, developed by Highway and 
Traffic Consultants Limited. New Zealand. 
2-3-1