Bengaluru engineer builds AI app that spots potholes, finds who should fix them

An engineer from Bengaluru built an AI-powered system that could detect potholes, pinpoint their location and identify the contractor responsible for the road.One engineer from Bengaluru designed a pothole detector with the help of AI. (Photo: Instagram/gkcs__)A pothole usually meant a bad ride, a damaged vehicle and another complaint to make. For an engineer from Bengaluru, it became a problem he could solve with a dashcam, AI and a database of government contracts.Gaurav Sen demonstrated the system in a video shared on Instagram in collaboration with ChatGPT India, which later found its way to X, where it attracted attention for turning a familiar civic headache into a data problem.The system designed by Sen uses a dashcam, GPS and an accelerometer fitted in his car to collect information as he drives. The footage is then processed using AI vision models to identify potholes of different sizes.Sen said he used Codex to build an app that records the relevant data and sends it to OpenAI. The system can also pick out potholes that may be difficult to identify from a distance because they can look like speed breakers. But detecting a pothole is only the first step. Sen wanted the system to answer the question that usually comes next: who is responsible for fixing it?To do that, he modified the app to go through 2,900 government contracts and identify the contractor responsible for a particular stretch of road. This is particularly useful when a road is still under warranty, he explained, because the contractor may be required to repair defects without additional cost to the government. The app can produce a structured record within four seconds, including the photograph, exact location, tender number and the officer responsible for the road.Watch the video here:Sen also put the system to a real-world test during one of his drives to work. It detected 12 potholes along the route, giving him documented evidence that could be used to raise complaints with civic authorities.The idea has since travelled well beyond Bengaluru. After the video reached X, users praised Sen for building something around a problem that affects motorists across the country. Some also suggested that civic authorities could use a similar system to identify damaged roads and speed up repairs.What began as an engineer trying to make his own commute a little less bumpy has, in the process, become an experiment in using AI to make civic complaints harder to ignore.- EndsPublished By: Srimoyee ChowdhuryPublished On: Aug 16, 2026 14:44 IST