Christoph Mertz spends his days looking at cracks in the street…

…Mertz is a researcher at Carnegie Mellon University. He works with CMU’s Traffic 21, a research arm of the university focusing on practical solutions to transportation problems, and he’s built a computer program that uses photos to detect cracks in street pavement. He’s been testing it out using photos extracted from the video he shoots in his own car, but he’s also working with the city to test the technology. He’s placed cameras inside three city vehicles.