Smartphone-Based Wheel Imbalance Detection

Onboard sensors in smartphones present new opportunities for vehicular sensing. In this paper, we explore a novel appli- cation of fault detection in wheels, tires and related suspension components in vehicles. We present a technique for in-situ wheel imbalance detection using accelerometer data obt...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Siegel, Joshua E, Bhattacharyya, Rahul, Sarma, Sanjay E, Deshpande, Ajay A.
Other Authors: Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Format: Article
Language:en_US
Published: American Society of Mechanical Engineers 2018
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/117420
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5540-7401
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2812-039X
Description
Summary:Onboard sensors in smartphones present new opportunities for vehicular sensing. In this paper, we explore a novel appli- cation of fault detection in wheels, tires and related suspension components in vehicles. We present a technique for in-situ wheel imbalance detection using accelerometer data obtained from a smartphone mounted on the dashboard of a vehicle having bal- anced and imbalanced wheel conditions. The lack of observable distinguishing features in a Fourier Transform (FT) of the accelerometer data necessitates the use of supervised machine learning techniques for imbalance detection. We demonstrate that a classification tree model built using Fourier feature data achieves 79% classification accuracy on test data. We further demonstrate that a Principal Component Analysis (PCA) trans- formation of the Fourier features helps uncover a unique observ- able excitation frequency for imbalance detection. We show that a classification tree model trained on randomized PCA features achieves greater than 90% accuracy on test data. Results demonstrate that the presence or absence of wheel imbalance can be ac- curately detected on at least two vehicles of different make and model. Sensitivity of the technique to different road and traffic conditions is examined. Future research directions are also discussed.