CARED
Collision and Read End Detection
Senior Project
Absract
In this project, our team of four will identify and provide an indicator for dangerous situations depending on the positions of the vehicles behind motorcyclists. We will use LIDAR to detect the distances with respect to time snippets then predict the velocities, and acceleration given those distance snippets. Depending on those three factors, we will determine if the motorcyclist is unsafe and notify them of the situation using LED indicators. The uniqueness of this experiment will be its adaptability to any motorcycle. This project is important since there are many vehicles who are rear-ended due to distracted driving; when a motorcyclist is rear-ended, the consequences could be fatal. This project is important since it will save the lives of many motorcyclists.
Design
Our Design consist of utilizing 3 different LIDARs, and these take measurements evey .01 seconds. We feed this data into our Arduino and calculate that if a vehicle is approaching too aggressively then the system alerts with a horn and LED lights.
Our system utilize 3 separate LIDARs along with 5 Circuit broads, 2 horns, and LEDs, finally an Arduino to control it all. We also use a custom box to package it all into one single package.
Results
Our group successfully created a product that can warn both a motorcyclist and an approaching driver of a collision. When approaching at too fast of a speed, our device makes a honking noise to alert the driver behind the motorcyclist, and the LEDs flash for the motorcyclist when there is danger. This can be seen in Appendix 8.2, under “Photos.” Further, Appendix 8.3 includes a graph that illustrates the response of the Arduino while in operation and the system’s response times. Our code for the system can also be seen in the Appendix 8.4, which includes the base code of our response times and how we determined when to sound the warnings. While we set out to have a lighting system warning for the driver behind the motorcyclist as well as one for the motorcyclist, we reached hardware limits of our circuit boards, and defaulted to only an audio warning for the car driver.
Conclusion
Rear end collisions remain to be the highest reported accidents in the United States. For motorcyclists this can lead to serious injury or death. Our goal for the project was to mitigate this as much as possible. While we do not have a consumer ready product we do have a prototype that is fully functioning. This prototype shows that when approached at unsafe speeds it alerts both the driver and motorcyclist. Our group did have to shoulder the full financial cost of the project which led to the use of materials that were not sufficient enough to do everything we set out to do. We recommend in the future further testing, and refinement of the design to be more compact, certalize and unify the battery sources.
