Intents Go Navigation App Detects Potholes On Roads

Intents Go is a real-time data provider of the potholes, roadworks, waterlogging, traffic, blockades and speed cameras while you ply on your journey smoothly. The company is set to launch a mapping application which offers you data of how bumpy the road ahead is going to be so you can find alternative routes to avoid damaging your vehicle or go through a bumpy ride.

The app is in the Beta stage right now but can be downloaded via the Google Play Store. The app collects data on a daily basis and identifies approximately 9,000 potholes and speed breakers regularly. The service has deployed over 2 lakh people who are identifying these parameters and updating them on the backend, so the user can have a day to day idea of what lies ahead.

The app will warn drivers about potholes on the road ahead of them

Intents Go was incepted as a personal project which started a couple of years ago by Tabrez Alam. "In 2017 I had developed a back problem and stopped driving my car. I noticed that the Uber riders would keep taking me from different routes which often had potholes," he revealed to carandbike.

Alam has already raised $200,000 for the company and is in the process of another round of funding. When the company was founded, it had ten drivers which included Alam himself who rode across the country to gather data for a training dataset. This dataset was matched with data gathered by truckdrivers who were incentivised to use the app with Paytm coupons between the value of Rs 4 to Rs 40.

Over the course, they have managed to create a robust dataset which the company believes will also be hard for the likes of Google Maps or Waze to replicate. Right now, Google Maps and Waze also allow users to flag potholes manually, but Intents Go does this more elegantly and effectively by detecting potholes and speed brakers from the gyrocscope and accelerormeter data of its users.

Intents Go also plans to add manual intervention on the app at a later stage. The company has already made immense progress during the start of the pandemic. The operations of the company oscillate between Gurgaon and Coimbatore.

The app is in its initial stage of Beta and is available on the Play Store as of now. They also have a iOS version in the pipeline for October.

The application aims to provide the user real-time data of the potholes, waterlogging, traffic and much more. The network is ever-growing and currently consists of over 2 lakh people. The scouts who use their phone sensors to map the roads, upload the information as and when they spot these issues that are defined. Intents Go said that they have a rewards programme in place which gives the person instant gratitude in exchange for their updates.

Potholes and speed breakers are a huge cause of accidents in India.

Alam also added that Intents Go does not take any data that can identify a user therefore it doesn't know who its users are, hence clarifying the privacy aspect of the app.

The application is still in the development phase. They claim to have mapped 20 lakh kilometres of roadways. As the number of scouts keeps increasing by the day, the amount of mapping. So far they claim to cover 1.5 lakh kilometres on a daily basis. Since it is real-time data, they have identified over 1.85 lakh potholes and speed bumps and 9,000 new ones are identified daily. Along with identifying the potholes, they are also updating how many have been repaired which is around 4,500 each day.

In the next few months, the app will transform into full-fledged mapping platform. You can check them out here.