Students develop Integrated Road Safety System

Even as the National Road Safety Month is underway (January 18 to February 17), the project of the students of Mandya-based PES College of Engineering, an ‘Integrated Road Safety System’ (IRRS), assumes significance.

IRRS may help to reduce the response time of the medical staff, which is vital for the survival of individuals involved in a mishap, and also send signals to road users for safety.

‘Revolution in Travelling with Integrated Road Safety System’ by N S Sanjay, B S Sammith, B Nived and V Soumik, had the guidance of Deepika, assistant professor, Computer Science and Engineering. The project also won the second prize in South India level Hackmania competition, held in association with Binghamton University of New York, USA, and Uma Nath Singh Institute of Engineering and Technology, Jaunpur, Uttar Pradesh, under Third phase of Technical Education Quality Improvement Programme (TEQIP-3) sponsorship.

Principal of PES College of Engineering, Mandya, H V Ravindra said that according to the Union Surface Transport Ministry, over 1.5 lakh people were killed in road accidents in 2015. “It is more than the number of people killed in all our wars combined. One serious road accident occurs in every country per minute and 16 die on Indian roads every hour. The aim of the project was to reduce the response time of the medical staff, which is vital for the survival of the victims of mishaps,” he said.

He said, "There are many reasons for traffic accident fatalities. One of them is delay in emergency assistance. To overcome this, IRRS identifies an accident, using various sensors and notifies the personnel concerned within 20 seconds. It also provides a geolocation of the place of accident.”

Deepika, assistant professor, said that the Indian Road Congress (IRC) specifications for road humps are clear. But, it is just theory. "The statistics prove that 11,000 fatalities happened in 2015 due to road humps alone. The project uses geofencing to detect and notify road humps as early as possible. A geo fence is a virtual parameter for a real-world geographic area. It is dynamically generated, like in a radius around the point location. Once all humps are identified, whenever the vehicle enters the geo fence radius of a hump, a notification is sent to the vehicle to slow down," she said.

“Under IRRS, a cloud black-box is installed for real-time tracking and anti-theft. All data, read from the sensors of the vehicles are stored in this black box, which can be accessed from anywhere, any time. The retrieved information is uploaded into the cloud, when internet is available. Once uploaded, the data in the black-box can be rewritten. These details can be used to analyse the problem that caused the accident,” she ssaid.

Deepaika further explains, “Besides, the project makes use of an SOS button, to send the precise location of the vehicle. This is to call an emergency team for assistance in case of an undetected problem, like sudden health issues. The project also has a wheel alignment fault detection and notification system."

"Usually faults in wheel alignments are recognised only when it is dangerous. But, IRRS has real-time monitoring of wheel alignment, so that possible accidents can be prevented. Generally, such features are seen in high-end cars, as separate individual devices. However, IRRS has integrated all these features in a single unit, which costs approximately Rs 7,000. This unit can be used in economy cars, to enhance road safety,” she said.