SysCon 2008 - IEEE International Systems Conference

Montreal, Canada, April 7-10, 2008

Vehicle Black Box System

Abdallah Kassem, Rabih Jabr, Ghady Salamouni, Ziad Khairallah Maalouf
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Notre Dame University,
P.O.Box: 72 Zouk Mikayel, Zouk Mosbeh, Lebanon

Abstract - The main purpose of this paper is to develop a prototype

of the Vehicle Black Box System VBBS that can be installed into any
vehicle all over the world. This prototype can be designed with
minimun number of circuits. The 7BBS can contribuite to
constructing safer vehicles improving the treatment o criash victims
helping insurance companies with their vehicle crash investigations
and enhancing rad status in oder to decreasethe death rate

Keywords- Vehicle, Black Box, Microcontroller, Con puter interface.

I. INTRODUCTION
According to the World Health Organization, more than a
million people in the world die each year because of
transportation-related accidents [1]. In order to react to this
situation, the black box system draws the first step to solve this
problem that crosses national boundaries and threatens the
safety and health of people worldwide. Introduced to a part of
the United States market in 1999, the black box system proved
to be efficient [2]. However in the latter case, the system was
embedded in the vehicle [3-5]. Therefore, in addition to
improving the treatment of crash victims and the road status in
order to decrease the death rate, constructing safer vehicles,
and helping insurance companies with their vehicle accidents
investigations, the main purpose of this paper is to develop a
black box system that can be installed to any vehicle all over
the world.
Like flight data recorders in aircraft, "black box"
technology can now play a key role in motor vehicle crash
investigations [6]. A significant number of vehicles currently
on the roads contain electronic systems that record information
in the event of a crash. That is why it is so important to have
recorders that objectively track what goes on in vehicles
before, during and after a crash as a complement to the
subjective input that is taken usually from victims, eye
witnesses and police reports.
This system is committed mainly to two approaches. The
first one is how to detect and record data from the vehicle. The
second is how to present the data recorded to the user in a
simplified way. To implement the first approach, some major
components and different type of sensors were used. While the
second approach was implemented using a Visual Basic .NET
computer program. This program receives the data serially
from the black box memory, presents it in real-time graphics
and finally saves it to a formal excel report for future use.

978-1 -4244-2 150-3/08/$25.OO 2008 IEEE

In order to know what type of sensors should be installed

into the vehicle, research was carried out to identify the main
information needed for better accident analysis. After filtering
the information and taking into consideration what could be
done and what could help the most, the following data were
f
found to be the most important ones needed after an accident:
Belt status, Road condition, Brake status, Speed Measurement,
Position of the accident, Main Lights status.
In this paper, we describe in section II the hardware
resources dedicated to VBBS system. The software part is
subject of the section III. Finally, a conclusion is given in
section IV.

II. HARDWARE RESOURCES

The hardware part consists on the sensors and the black box
installed into the vehicle. This part mainly collects the status of
the sensors and saves it to the microcontroller's EEPROM.
A. Sensors
1. Speed Sensor
An inductive proximity sensor HYP-18RL8P is used to
detect the number of wheel turns per unit of time [7]. This
sensor can be used for the detection of all good electrical
conductors (materials). It has a sensing distance of maximum 8
mm, and a Current Voltage 12 - 24VDC. Note that in case it
detects some metal; it will have an output voltage of exactly
what was given to its input voltage. However, when there is no
detection, the output will be zero volts.
Because of the 14VDC of its output, a voltage divider was
placed between the sensor's output and the microcontroller's
input pin to decrease the voltage to 5VDC. Finally in order to
detect the speed in the PICBasic Pro, the 'COUNT' command
was used.
2. Water Sensor
The water sensor module used is very sensitive to water
level, and its sensitivity can be increased by turning the
potentiometer. This module consists of two uncovered and
unconnected wires equidistant of each other, as seen in the
figure 1. When this sensor detects water, the two wires will be
connected through water conductivity, and the status of the
sensor will be on.
The module is implemented inside the black box, whereas the
sensors are placed in the front of the vehicle behind the front
wheels to detect the first change in the road status.

Fig. 1. Equidistant Wires

3. Switches
To stimulate accident sensors and belt sensors push button
are used [8]. They have three pins, one pin for the common (C)
and the other two for normally closed (NC) and normally open
(NO). In the black box system, nine push buttons were used.
One of them is used as the belt sensor and the eight others as
the accident sensors. In all cases the NO pin was used becauset
a zero volt was needed as input to the microcontroller, when
the push button is pressed. This justifies the use of pull up
resistors for all these nine inputs of the PIC.
a- Accident Sensors

Because the purpose is to detect only accidents that hit the

chassis of the vehicle, only eight pushbuttons are used around
the vehicle. The distribution of sensors is shown in figure 2.

acidsesors

Fig. 2. Accident Sensor Distribution

When an accident is detected logic '0' will be applied to the
corresponding input pin of the microcontroller. In other cases
the input of the 8 pins connected to the accident sensors is
logic '1' due to the pull up resistors connected to these pins.
b- Belt Sensor
One push button is used to detect the place of the seat belt
during the drive. The seat belt of the driver is only taken into
consideration in this paper, but can be extended to include all
the belts of the vehicle, depending on the traffic regulations of
each country.
The push button is placed on the seatbelt and gives a logic
'zero' when the belt is used and a logic ' I' when the belt is not
placed by the driver.
4. Lights Sensor

For a particular vehicle, the important lights in the

analysis of an accident are the flashers, the brake lights and the
rear lights. The rear lights are needed in the analysis to know
the direction of the vehicle. The brake lights are needed to
show the brake status seen by the driver behind, before the
accident. Finally, the flashers will also be useful in the analysis

of the accident in order to determine whether the driver has

used them properly.
This sensor consists of a small magnetic switch, connected to
the input of the microcontroller, and a bobbin wire all around
it. This wire is in series with the light connection of the
vehicle. Whenever the light is "ON", a current will pass in the
wire, creating a magnetic field. This magnetic field will cause
the switch to close. Thus the microcontroller will detect 5V in
case of the flashers, and OV in case of the other lights.
However, an additional circuit was connected between the
sensor's output and the microcontroller's input pin for the
flashers sensors. This circuit converts an ON/OFF period to an
ON period. This circuit is added so the sensor's status will be
ON for the total duration when the flasher is turned ON. Figure
3 shows the different parts of the sensor.

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Fig. 3. Light Sensor

5. Brake Sensor
The brake sensor is a type of switch implemented in the
vehicle underneath the brake footstep. This switch controls the
brake lights. In order to know if the driver pushed the brake
during the accident, this switch is connected to the input of the
microcontroller. However as mentioned above, the brake
sensor has an output of 14V. So it needs a voltage divider in
order to have 5V at the input of the brake switch pin of the
microcontroller.
B. Digitalprocessing
In order to control all these sensors and their inputs, a
digital process can be used [9]. As prototype a microcontroller
is selected to control the VBBS. This will allow the control
circuit to be realized by a minimum of circuits. Thus resulting
in less maintenance, minimization of the occupied space on a
PCB, and reduced costs.
For this prototype, the main need was a large EEPROM, to
enable recording as much data as possible about the accident,
and a large amount of inputs. Thus, PIC16F877A was used
because it has 8 Kbytes of Flash Program Memory, 368 bytes
of Data Memory, 256 bytes EEPROM data memory, 15
interrupts, 8 input channels, 5 1/0 Ports, and many other

characteristics.

1. Microcontroller's Connections
The inputs to the microcontroller, which contain
information about the accident, are distributed as follows: 8
pins for the 8 accident sensors, 8 for the lights (flashers
included), 1 for the speed sensor, 1 for the belt sensor, 1 for the
brake switch, 1 for the water sensor, and 1 pin for the serial
switch. The outputs of the microcontroller are three pins for
the LEDs, and two pins for serial transmission and reception.
The three LEDs will show the user whether the black box is
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C. Data Transmission
One of the main characteristics of this system is that only
the authorized people could access the true interpretation of
the black box data. This is due to the interface between the
microcontroller and the computer, in addition to the specific
programs written for both of them.
As described previously, the data related to the accident is
saved in the EEPROM of the 16F877A PIC. An interface is
thus needed to transmit this data from the EEPROM to a
specific computer, where a VB.NET program can use them to
~~~~~~beginthe analysis.
The choice of the microcontroller's transmission protocol was
the standard asynchronous format using 8 data bits, no parity
bit and one stop bit with a 9600 baud rate. Since the
complexity is in the interpretation of the data and not in the
transmission, the need was for a format that guarantees
lminimum simplicity with maximum reliability. In addition, a
MAX232 is used as an intermediary station, to connect the PIC
to the serial port of the computer.
III. SOFTWARE RESOURCES
After covering the hardware part of the Black Box system,
it's now time to take a look at the main functions of the Visual
Basic .NET program and how the user will be shown the data
recorded before, during, and after the accident. The main
duties of this program are to receive data serially, interpret,
and finally display it to the user in a clear and simple way.

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before going to sleep. This sleep mode ends if the switch on

PortA.4 is switched to '0'. When this happens, the
microcontroller program will go to the "SerialTest" where the
data saved on the EEPROM will be transmitted serially to the
Visual Basic.NET program in order to be visualized using an
interface that could be helpful in analyzing the accident. The
value of the Pointer is sent first, followed by the Accident
Pointer and finally the remaining data will be transmitted in a
loop from the oldest sample to the newest one. Add to that, a
method of handshake is used between the microcontroller and
the VB.NET program in order to be sure that there is no data
lost during the transmission. The overall explanation of the
microcontroller's program is found in the flowchart of the

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The VB NET program consists of two functional and four

graphical forms. One of the functional forms is the Main Page
as shown in the figure 6. The EXIT button is used to exit the
program while the SERIAL button is used for the serial
reception of data. Also found on this page are the steps that the
user should follow in order to have a successful transmission.
Once the SERIAL button is pressed; the serial port settings
will be set as the ones used for data transmission in the
microcontroller, 9600 baud rate, 8 data bit, no parity, and 1
stop bit. In order to have a reliable transmission, a handshake
program was written to interface the microcontroller and the
VB.NET program. The VB.Net program sends an 'A'
character to the PIC before receiving every byte. Once it is
received, the program will save it into its corresponding place.
After the transmission is completed successfully the
corresponding bytes are converted to bits and the program will
move on to the second functional form, the Display Page.
Figure 7 shows this page which contains 7 buttons; 4 for
display purposes, 1 to open and save the report excel file, the
EXIT and the BACK buttons. Each one of these buttons has its
own mouse click event. So each one of them has its own

program that will run once clicked on.

=

- The brake and the brake lights will be ON between 7.5

seconds and 8.5 seconds then between the 20 and 27.5
-

seconds.
The belt sensor will be off.

- The other lights unspecified during this example were off.

When the user presses on the "Speed Graph" button, the

following form (figure 8) will open.

Speed Graph

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10 5 15
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lime

.5 20 25 2D 75 30

Fig. 8. Speed graph sample

As shown in figure 8, the y-axis shows the speed from 0 to

255km/h and the x-axis shows the time in second from 0 to 31
seconds. Also it is important to know that the red line
represents the accident time.
3

Fig. 7. Display Page of the VB.NET Program

In order to show how the program displays the recorded data

in a clear and simple way using its 4 display forms, an accident
example will be given and the result will be shown in the
display forms. In all the forms, an interval of 31 seconds will
be used from the oldest value recorded to the newest one. In
this example the following will be considered:
- The speed will vary before the accident from 20 to 70 km/h.
Then it will decrease to 0km/hr after the accident.
-

The accident position will be next to the driver and after 3

seconds the vehicle is hitting again in its left back.
The right flashers will be on from the fifth to the tenth
second.
There will be water on the road before the accident, so the
water sensor will be ON during the time interval of the
accident.

Fig. 9. Miscellaneous Table Sample

Figure 9 shows he "Miscellaneous Table" button when it is
open. The true icon represents an ON status of the sensor while
the false icon represents its OFF status. This table represents

As expected, the forms showed in the last 4 figures matches

exactly the description of the example given before displaying
these forms.
The only button which remains unexplained is the Report
button. Once pressed, it will send to a formal EXCEL report
all the data received from the black box so they can be saved
and printed. Additional information should be entered in this
[ 5 X | 4 | j4| j j a f 13 X | j | j ||formal report by the user. This information includes Vehicle,
lM l
!4CI E1 iS l im1 1| | i 1n
typeDrivername,andaccidentinformation.

the Belt, water, and brake sensors for each 0.5 second sample
saved into the microcontroller's EEPROM.
The same method is used to show the Lights status when the
"Lights Table" Button is pressed; however this table shows 8
lights sensors as shown in the figure 10.
IV

1- I-W -I5

IV. CONCLUSION

=
II

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This paper has presented a new vision for the vehicles

industry, which is the Black Box system used for vehicles. A

full and detailed description was made for every part of this
system. This paper has also offered a user friendly visual basic
program to analyze the data of the accident. In addition, the
7method between the two parts has been
I I I I _7transmission
I
introduced and developed.
i,
I
I. I, I
I
_The Black Box system built can be implemented in any
I
vehicle. As soon as the driver runs the motor, this system will
begin saving the events of the corresponding vehicle. The last
7
75-1
are always saved in the EEPROM of the Black
Iw IoI I =e====21
=seconds
=
0
I II.=Box, and in case of an accident, an additional 10 seconds of
0 f
events after this accident will be saved. The data saved can be
IIII=,retrieved only after the accident for privacy purposes. Using
serial transmission, a VB.NET program will read the data from
the
EEPROM and display it to the user in Graphical format. In
10.
Lights
Table
Sample
Fig.
addition, a detailed report will be given to the user containing
The "Accident Graph" button, when pressed will open the alncsayifrain
form shown in the figure 11. This form shows 20 vehicle
samples (after the accident's samples). On each vehicle 8 icons
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
are placed exactly where the accident sensors were installed in
the vehicle. The true icon represents ON status of the sensor
Authors would like to acknowledge the financial support
while the false icon will represent an OFF status of the sensor. from NDU, and the CAD tools from Microchip Company.
Note that only 20 samples were shown in this form since all
the accident sensors are OFF before the accident.
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[1] G. Hayes, F. Blosser, "Motor Vehicle Crashes Claim More than a Million
Lives Worldwide", CDC Injury Center Media Relations, Press Release,
April, 2004.
[2] htll//wwwairba crash corn (General Motor Event Data Recorders)

Accident Position
A|t The Ajkiden t
i

A TtHU
Ld s

AccidST=d

T +1
T+1s

K. Kowalick, "Black Boxes: Event Data Recorders", MICAH,

| | | e t e | 7 ee 1 [3] Thomas 2005.
t 1 |;-summer
17+
T+
Thomas K. Kowalick, "Black Boxes: Event Data Recorder Rulemaking
~~~~~~~~~~[4]
T

.E

for Automobiles", MICAH, summer 2006.

T+2

T+p

T-5s

T+2R

< |}||
<w
T 43+

2)

T_

1 k a1
1><t-

_5_

If
T+

T+

l l< |~~~~~~~~~~~T+9<

[5] Thomas K. Kowalick, "Fatal Exit: The Automotive Black Box Debate",
Wiley, IEEE Press, Feb. 2005.
J.
[6] Lawrence and T. Newbery, "Crash Data Recorders in Motor Vehicles",
1Maclnnis Engineering, Associates, 2003.
[7] lii, ://wwv~b
~cv~k(Inductive proximity sensor HYP-18RL8P)

p <;11|
[8]711Chidester, Augustus, et al, "Recording Automotive Crash Event Data"
I<7 < ll i YInternational Symposium on Transportation Recorders, Arlington, VA,
1999.

<1l t<711
<1||
~~~~~~~~~~[9] L. Dae Geun, J. Se Myoung, L. Myoung Seob, "System on Chip design of
| |iB14
J 4t[21g IX tt| ~~~Em bedded Controller for Car Black Box", Intelligent Vehicles
T7s

Fig. 11. Accident Graph sample

T7.

||
Symposium
I
IEEE 2007, pp. 1174-1177, 13 June 2007.