An Intelligent Guardrail Context-Awareness System Based on Acceleration Sensors in Ubiquitous Sensor Networks

摘要

A ubiquitous city (u-City) is a next-generation information-based city that combines state-of-the-art IT (information technology) infrastructures and ubiquitous information services. In general, the urban facilities of a u-City can be categorized into ground and underground facilities. This paper proposes a guardrail context-awareness system based on the analysis of acceleration sensors to manage guardrails systematically. Guardrails are one of the major ground facilities in a u-City. The suggested system generates alarms when acceleration sensors on guardrails recognize a certain level of physical shock. General information on the size and direction from the acceleration sensors is transmitted to the context-awareness system. The context-awareness system analyzes the scalar magnitude of the impacted shock, acceleration values to thex,y, andzdirections, gravity direction of the sensors, and threshold values. It then determines if there is pronounced physical activity on the guardrail. Experimental results show that the suggested guardrail context-awareness approach accurately recognizes guardrail shock events that occur in various environments.