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Vehicle Black Box System

Conference Paper · May 2008

DOI: 10.1109/SYSTEMS.2008.4519050 · Source: IEEE Xplore

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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 In order to know what type of sensors should be installed
of the Vehicle Black Box System VBBS that can be installed into any into the vehicle, research was carried out to identify the main
vehicle all over the world. This prototype can be designed with information needed for better accident analysis. After filtering
minimum number of circuits. The VBBS can contribute to the information and taking into consideration what could be
constructing safer vehicles, improving the treatment of crash victims, done and what could help the most, the following data were
helping insurance companies with their vehicle crash investigations,
and enhancing road status in order to decrease the death rate.
found to be the most important ones needed after an accident:
Belt status, Road condition, Brake status, Speed Measurement,
Keywords- Vehicle, Black Box, Microcontroller, Computer interface. 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
I. INTRODUCTION subject of the section III. Finally, a conclusion is given in
According to the World Health Organization, more than a section IV.
million people in the world die each year because of
transportation-related accidents [1]. In order to react to this II. HARDWARE RESOURCES
situation, the black box system draws the first step to solve this The hardware part consists on the sensors and the black box
problem that crosses national boundaries and threatens the installed into the vehicle. This part mainly collects the status of
safety and health of people worldwide. Introduced to a part of the sensors and saves it to the microcontroller’s EEPROM.
the United States market in 1999, the black box system proved
to be efficient [2]. However in the latter case, the system was A. Sensors
embedded in the vehicle [3-5]. Therefore, in addition to 1. Speed Sensor
improving the treatment of crash victims and the road status in
order to decrease the death rate, constructing safer vehicles, An inductive proximity sensor HYP-18RL8P is used to
and helping insurance companies with their vehicle accidents detect the number of wheel turns per unit of time [7]. This
investigations, the main purpose of this paper is to develop a sensor can be used for the detection of all good electrical
black box system that can be installed to any vehicle all over conductors (materials). It has a sensing distance of maximum 8
the world. mm, and a Current Voltage 12 – 24VDC. Note that in case it
detects some metal; it will have an output voltage of exactly
Like flight data recorders in aircraft, “black box” what was given to its input voltage. However, when there is no
technology can now play a key role in motor vehicle crash detection, the output will be zero volts.
investigations [6]. A significant number of vehicles currently Because of the 14VDC of its output, a voltage divider was
on the roads contain electronic systems that record information placed between the sensor’s output and the microcontroller’s
in the event of a crash. That is why it is so important to have input pin to decrease the voltage to 5VDC. Finally in order to
recorders that objectively track what goes on in vehicles detect the speed in the PICBasic Pro, the ‘COUNT’ command
before, during and after a crash as a complement to the was used.
subjective input that is taken usually from victims, eye
witnesses and police reports. 2. Water Sensor
This system is committed mainly to two approaches. The The water sensor module used is very sensitive to water
first one is how to detect and record data from the vehicle. The level, and its sensitivity can be increased by turning the
second is how to present the data recorded to the user in a potentiometer. This module consists of two uncovered and
simplified way. To implement the first approach, some major unconnected wires equidistant of each other, as seen in the
components and different type of sensors were used. While the figure 1. When this sensor detects water, the two wires will be
second approach was implemented using a Visual Basic .NET connected through water conductivity, and the status of the
computer program. This program receives the data serially sensor will be on.
from the black box memory, presents it in real-time graphics The module is implemented inside the black box, whereas the
and finally saves it to a formal excel report for future use. sensors are placed in the front of the vehicle behind the front
wheels to detect the first change in the road status.
 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 0V in case of the other lights.
Fig. 1. Equidistant Wires However, an additional circuit was connected between the
sensor’s output and the microcontroller’s input pin for the
3. Switches flashers sensors. This circuit converts an ON/OFF period to an
To stimulate accident sensors and belt sensors push button ON period. This circuit is added so the sensor’s status will be
are used [8]. They have three pins, one pin for the common (C) ON for the total duration when the flasher is turned ON. Figure
and the other two for normally closed (NC) and normally open 3 shows the different parts of the sensor.
(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 because
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. Fig. 3. Light Sensor

a- Accident Sensors 5. Brake Sensor

Because the purpose is to detect only accidents that hit the The brake sensor is a type of switch implemented in the
chassis of the vehicle, only eight pushbuttons are used around vehicle underneath the brake footstep. This switch controls the
the vehicle. The distribution of sensors is shown in figure 2. 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. Digital processing
In order to control all these sensors and their inputs, a
Fig. 2. Accident Sensor Distribution digital process can be used [9]. As prototype a microcontroller
is selected to control the VBBS. This will allow the control
When an accident is detected logic ‘0’ will be applied to the circuit to be realized by a minimum of circuits. Thus resulting
corresponding input pin of the microcontroller. In other cases in less maintenance, minimization of the occupied space on a
the input of the 8 pins connected to the accident sensors is PCB, and reduced costs.
logic ‘1’ due to the pull up resistors connected to these pins. For this prototype, the main need was a large EEPROM, to
b- Belt Sensor enable recording as much data as possible about the accident,
and a large amount of inputs. Thus, PIC16F877A was used
One push button is used to detect the place of the seat belt because it has 8 Kbytes of Flash Program Memory, 368 bytes
during the drive. The seat belt of the driver is only taken into of Data Memory, 256 bytes EEPROM data memory, 15
consideration in this paper, but can be extended to include all interrupts, 8 input channels, 5 I/O Ports, and many other
the belts of the vehicle, depending on the traffic regulations of characteristics.
each country.
The push button is placed on the seatbelt and gives a logic 1. Microcontroller’s Connections
‘zero’ when the belt is used and a logic ‘1’ when the belt is not The inputs to the microcontroller, which contain
placed by the driver. information about the accident, are distributed as follows: 8
4. Lights Sensor 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
For a particular vehicle, the important lights in the brake switch, 1 for the water sensor, and 1 pin for the serial
analysis of an accident are the flashers, the brake lights and the switch. The outputs of the microcontroller are three pins for
rear lights. The rear lights are needed in the analysis to know the LEDs, and two pins for serial transmission and reception.
the direction of the vehicle. The brake lights are needed to The three LEDs will show the user whether the black box is
show the brake status seen by the driver behind, before the recording, waiting, or transmitting.
accident. Finally, the flashers will also be useful in the analysis
 Fig.4. Black Box System connection

Two pins are connected to the MAX232, which in its turn is time. Ten seconds were used to monitor the vehicle status after
connected to the serial port of the black box. Figure 4 shows the accident, so 21 seconds are left to give information before
all the black box connections. any accident occurs, and 0.5 second or one sample is omitted.
Addresses 0 to 251 will make up the 63 blocks of accident’s
2. Microcontroller’s EEPROM
information which are ordered like the following: The first
The EEPROM contained in the PIC has the size of 256 Byte represents the accident sensors, the second will contain
Bytes, and since each address contains 1Byte, the EEPROM the 3 bits of the belt sensor, the brake switch and the water
has 256 addresses from $00 to $FF. The last 4 addresses will sensor, the third Byte represents the speed, and the fourth
be reserved to save the value of a counter used in controlling represents the Lights status for each sample.
the record process on address 252, the accident time on
3. Microcontroller’s Program
address 253, a variable used to differentiate the process of
recording and the process of reading the information on The main function of the microcontroller program is to
address 254, and the pointer on address 255. Thus, in total 252 take input samples from different ports each 0.5 seconds.
addresses will be available for recording the accident data. The These samples are taken from the sensors installed in the
accident sensors are grouped into 1 Byte in the EEPROM. vehicle, respectively in the following order: Pushbuttons,
Another Byte is needed for the lights. The microcontroller will Miscellaneous, Speed, and Lights. After that, each sensor
read the pulses from the speed sensor and transform them into sample is saved into the microcontroller’s EEPROM. Also the
a value, thus the need of in addition 1 Byte to have a maximum value of the current pointer is updated and saved after each
value of 255 km/h. Finally the other parameters are grouped block of four samples.
into 1 more Byte. So, to save the data in the EEPROM, a block Note that the pointer will return to 0 after saving on the 251
of 4 Bytes will be required for each sample. The address of the EEPROM. So the newest sample will be saved
microcontroller will take a sample of the inputs each 0.5 on the oldest sample at address 0 and the process will start
seconds, so 63 samples (252/4) will be saved as a total. This again. This process will keep a maximum of 63 samples saved
means that the EEPROM can save up to 31.5 seconds of input in the EEPROM at a time.
 Main 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
SERREAD
data saved on the EEPROM will be transmitted serially to the
YES Visual Basic.NET program in order to be visualized using an
middle LED
'ON'
interface that could be helpful in analyzing the accident. The
value of the Pointer is sent first, followed by the Accident
if serial
Pointer and finally the remaining data will be transmitted in a
NO switch YES loop from the oldest sample to the newest one. Add to that, a
i s 'ON' method of handshake is used between the microcontroller and
the VB.NET program in order to be sure that there is no data
if there was an GOTO lost during the transmission. The overall explanation of the
Transmission
accident
process
microcontroller’s program is found in the flowchart of the
NO
the left LED ''ON' figure 5.
C. Data Transmission
POINTER = One of the main characteristics of this system is that only
0
the authorized people could access the true interpretation of
the black box data. This is due to the interface between the
LOOP
microcontroller and the computer, in addition to the specific
programs written for both of them.

save pointer
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
LOOP specific computer, where a VB.NET program can use them to
begin the analysis.
Accident sensors
I = 128
YES
The choice of the microcontroller’s transmission protocol was
and save
If sensors != the standard asynchronous format using 8 data bits, no parity
255 bit and one stop bit with a 9600 baud rate. Since the
AccidentTime
Subroutine complexity is in the interpretation of the data and not in the
IF X = 0 YES transmission, the need was for a format that guarantees
NO
X=1
NO
minimum simplicity with maximum reliability. In addition, a
MAX232 is used as an intermediary station, to connect the PIC
SAVE to the serial port of the computer.

IF Counter = GOTO
III. SOFTWARE RESOURCES
YES
0 SERREAD
Counter = Counter - 1 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
save accident sensors NO Speed = Turn * 6
Basic .NET program and how the user will be shown the data
recorded before, during, and after the accident. The main
POINTER = SAVE duties of this program are to receive data serially, interpret,
POINTER + 1
POINTER =
and finally display it to the user in a clear and simple way.
POINTER + 1
Miscellaneous
LIGHTS
ANDED WITH $07
and SAVE IT
SAVE

POINTER =
POINTER + 1 POINTER =
POINTER + 1
SPEED
Pause 100
Count PortA.3,(300), GOTO
Turn LOOP

Fig.5. Flow Chart of the Main Program

After an accident, the microcontroller will take 20 samples of

each sensor or a total of 10 seconds of data after the accident
Fig. 6. Main Page of the VB.NET Program
The VB .NET program consists of two functional and four - The brake and the brake lights will be ON between 7.5
graphical forms. One of the functional forms is the Main Page seconds and 8.5 seconds then between the 20 and 27.5
as shown in the figure 6. The EXIT button is used to exit the seconds.
program while the SERIAL button is used for the serial
- The belt sensor will be off.
reception of data. Also found on this page are the steps that the
user should follow in order to have a successful transmission. - The other lights unspecified during this example were off.
Once the SERIAL button is pressed; the serial port settings When the user presses on the “Speed Graph” button, the
will be set as the ones used for data transmission in the following form (figure 8) will open.
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.

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.

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.
Fig. 9. Miscellaneous Table Sample
- There will be water on the road before the accident, so the
water sensor will be ON during the time interval of the Figure 9 shows he “Miscellaneous Table” button when it is
accident. open. The true icon represents an ON status of the sensor while
the false icon represents its OFF status. This table represents
the Belt, water, and brake sensors for each 0.5 second sample As expected, the forms showed in the last 4 figures matches
saved into the microcontroller’s EEPROM. exactly the description of the example given before displaying
The same method is used to show the Lights status when the these forms.
“Lights Table” Button is pressed; however this table shows 8 The only button which remains unexplained is the Report
lights sensors as shown in the figure 10. 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
formal report by the user. This information includes Vehicle,
type Driver name, and accident information.

IV. CONCLUSION

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
transmission method between the two parts has been
introduced and developed.
The Black Box system built can be implemented in any
vehicle. As soon as the driver runs the motor, this system will
begin saving the events of the corresponding vehicle. The last
21 seconds are always saved in the EEPROM of the Black
Box, and in case of an accident, an additional 10 seconds of
events after this accident will be saved. The data saved can be
retrieved only after the accident for privacy purposes. Using
serial transmission, a VB.NET program will read the data from
Fig. 10. Lights Table Sample the EEPROM and display it to the user in Graphical format. In
addition, a detailed report will be given to the user containing
The “Accident Graph” button, when pressed will open the all necessary information.
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.
REFERENCES

[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] http://www.airbagcrash.com (General Motor Event Data Recorders)
[3] Thomas K. Kowalick, “Black Boxes: Event Data Recorders”, MICAH,
summer 2005.
[4] Thomas K. Kowalick, “Black Boxes: Event Data Recorder Rulemaking
for Automobiles”, MICAH, summer 2006.
[5] Thomas K. Kowalick, “Fatal Exit: The Automotive Black Box Debate”,
Wiley, IEEE Press, Feb. 2005.
[6] J. Lawrence and T. Newbery, “Crash Data Recorders in Motor Vehicles”,
MacInnis Engineering, Associates, 2003.
[7] http://www.hyelec.co.kr (Inductive proximity sensor HYP-18RL8P)
[8] Chidester, Augustus, et al, “Recording Automotive Crash Event Data”,
International Symposium on Transportation Recorders, Arlington, VA,
1999.
[9] L. Dae Geun, J. Se Myoung, L. Myoung Seob, “System on Chip design of
Embedded Controller for Car Black Box”, Intelligent Vehicles
Symposium IEEE 2007, pp. 1174-1177, 13 June 2007.

Fig. 11. Accident Graph sample

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