Fleet management company Samsara announced in May 2026 a new AI-powered platform called “Ground Intelligence” that uses cameras mounted on commercial trucks to detect potholes, track how quickly they deteriorate, and deliver that data to city governments through a live dashboard.
Samsara, based in San Francisco, has spent the past decade equipping millions of trucks with cameras for driver monitoring, theft prevention, and liability purposes. The company used that accumulated footage to train an AI model capable of identifying multiple types of potholes and monitoring changes at specific locations over time. Because Samsara’s cameras are installed across a large commercial fleet, the company says it can generate more frequent, repeat observations of the same road locations than smaller autonomous vehicle programs — noting that Waymo’s robotaxi fleet currently numbers around 3,000 vehicles by comparison.
Ground Intelligence functions as a map-based dashboard that proactively flags developing potholes and other infrastructure problems. It also allows cities to pull anonymized vehicle footage to verify citizen reports of issues such as downed street signs or clogged sewers. Samsara VP of Product Johan Land said the tool shifts city maintenance from a reactive process to a proactive one, allowing crews to plan sweeps of entire areas rather than responding to individual complaints.
The city of Chicago has signed on as a new customer, and Samsara said it already has multiple other cities under contract. Land indicated that pothole detection is the first feature in a planned series, with future capabilities potentially including detection of graffiti, broken guardrails, and low-hanging power lines — anything observable from a vehicle camera that could be relevant to cities or private-sector clients.
Samsara also announced two related products on Tuesday: “Waste Intelligence,” which helps waste management companies confirm customer pickups, and a “ridership management” tool for bus operators that can flag unexpected boarding events and generate digital manifests for school buses.
The announcements come shortly after Waymo and Waze revealed a separate pilot program to share pothole data with local governments, and as scooter company Lime cited potholes as a formal business risk in its IPO filing last week.
Source: TechCrunch