PitScan

Among many reasons India ranks the worst in road deaths worldwide, perhaps the most wretched and shocking are potholes. Potholes have turned out to be a major cause of road accidents and a number of deaths have been reported recently after people lost control of their vehicles while navigating them. Highways, which are considered to be better maintained, are also not free of gaping potholes. According to government data, potholes claimed on average death of 5,626 people between 2018 and 2020, according to the latest government data.

The situation could only have worsened now because the pandemic has affected the repair and maintenance work on roads in the last two years. Increasing vehicular traffic and rains deteriorate the condition of roads. The patchwork done to fill the potholes does not last beyond the next shower and the potholes are soon ready for the next accident.

According to the report titled Road Accidents in India — 2021, the number of accidents caused by potholes is 3,625 while in 2020 it was 3564. Similarly, the number of deaths and injured stands at 1481 and 3103 respectively (1471 and 3064 in 2020).

A prime illustration of this can be find here.

The ministry had noted that road accidents occur due to multiple reasons such as automobile design, over speeding, use of mobile phone, drunken driving/consumption of alcohol/drug, overloaded vehicle, vehicular condition, poor light condition and so on.

PitScan is world’s first low cost pothole detector which can detect any pothole in front of a vehicle from 20m away from the pothole. The working of this detector is fairly simple: whenever PitScan detects any pothole, it would alert the driver with a buzzing sound. To ensure that there is no false-negative, we have programmed our detector in such a way that it would beep out only when the pothole’s depth is more than 90cm. 

Our solution consists of two ultrasonic sensors, Arduino Nano and a Buzzer. The detector would be attached in front of the car on its bumper. The cost of this detector is only 800rupees making it highly affordable.

The accuracy of this detector is 98% making it highly reliable and dependable. 

Our target population are mainly those people who do late night driving on highways and roads. Also we want to serve other people who are compelled to do driving on rigid roads.

I'm taking part in this contest individually. I'm an eighth-grader from DELHI, India. I am also a member of the CBSE and INTEL-created AI Students Committee. I'm interested in technology, and I want to create something that can significantly improve society and provide a solution to millions of problems. I am among those who focus more on the problem than on the solution. Future plans include starting my own business to produce tech-related goods that can be used to solve a variety of everyday issues. I'm quite interested in programming, and I'm familiar with C, PYTHON, HTML, JAVA, JAVASCRIPT, and MYSQL. In a nutshell, I love technology.

I have taken the advice of many people who have faced this issue and then I made my final solution design so that it won't have any negative affect.

I need funds to develop my solution and also someone who could really help me in building my final product. Right now I am able to take only some people's advice but under the right guidance, I think that I can really understand the problem more perfectly and build a nice solution. 

Right now I am an 8th grader and I don't have any registered organization to build a final product but I know that through Solve I would get a chance to get in contact with mentors and professionals who can really guide me in making this product.

I don't have the right guidance and financial support but if I am selected as a finalist then I will surely convert this prototype into a solution because I know it is going to help make millions of people's life better.

In short, I am participating in this competition to get the right guidance and financial support.