Entropy Based Classification of Road-Profiles

In this study, the Shannon entropies of six different road-profiles ranging from “very good asphalt road” to “dirt road (terrain)” were calculated. Results indicate that each type of road has a well defined entropy value and that the entropies of roads ranging from “very good asphalt” to “dirt road (terrain)” lie on a nearly linear locus. A second approach presented in this paper consists in measuring the sprung mass vertical acceleration of a vehicle running over segments of roads of different qualities and calculating the entropies of the acceleration signals. This procedure has been applied to assess the influence of nonlinear damping and vehicle speed. It has been seen that it is possible to identify the type of the road surface through the calculation of entropy if the vehicle operating parameters are known. Finally, it is observed that the locus of entropy values is concave on the plot of acceleration entropy versus root mean square (RMS) acceleration.