A non-contact technique for road macro texture measurements from a survey vehicle.

This paper reports the development of a combined laser and video image technique to measure macro texture depth of road samples. A CCD camera was used to capture images of a laser profile and these images are transferred to a computer for analysis. The technique was used to measure ten reference samples and road samples. Error in macro texture measurement was less than 4%. Measurements correlated well with highway engineers' subjective assessment. It is proposed that the technique could be used in an automatic survey vehicle for real time measurements; however, this potential is not yet fully developed.