Experimenting with Recognition Accelerator for Pavement Distress Identification

A study was conducted using a computer board embedded with an artificial neural network (ANN) microchip for pattern recognition of pavement distress classification. The basic principles behind ANNs and pattern recognition are discussed. The hardware architecture of the Ni1000 recognition accelerator chip, which is the core of the ANN computer board, is presented, and the principle of operation of the restricted coulomb energy algorithm used in the chip is discussed. It is demonstrated that the Ni1000 Recognition Accelerator chip can be used for pattern recognition of pavement distress. Distresses in pavement images have been successfully classified using the Ni1000 recognition accelerator. The Ni1000 has the potential to be used as the core processing unit for distress classification at highway speeds.