All news

Google develops mobile application to assess Russia roads quality

The application is also available for a free download in the Google Play online store

MOSCOW, March 15 (Itar-Tass) — One of the world’s major Internet companies Google has presented an application for mobile phones, which will assess the quality of Russian roads. Google Russia marketing manager Arkady Khachkovanyan noted in the company’s official Internet blog that the project will allow Internet users to check the condition of the roadway surface on the routes they are interested in.

The project consists of two parts: a free application Roads of Russia for mobile devices based on Android operating system and a special website with maps - rusdorogi.ru. “The mobile application automatically collects data about the quality of roads and displays them on the map in four colours: roads with a good quality surface are marked with green, medium quality – with yellow, bad – with red, and very bad – with dark red,” the company manager said. According to Khachkovanyan, the application installed on a mobile phone during a car’s movement analyses the vibration of its suspension system and transmits the data to the website server for further processing.

The statistics is also available on the Internet site: the total mileage of roads assessed, a chart of the road surface quality, the dynamics and the rating of new data on cities. “Already today, the Internet users can check the quality of roads in seven cities: Moscow, St. Petersburg, Krasnodar, Nizhny Novgorod, Yekaterinburg, Kazan and Rostov-on-Don,” it is said in the company’s blog. “More and more roads on which motorists have travelled will be appearing every day on the maps.”

The application is also available for a free download in the Google Play online store. The developers claim that they have cared about saving battery life of mobile phones: the application uses energy-efficient algorithm that turns off the GPS, when it is not needed.