International Journal of Engineering and Technical Research (IJETR)

ISSN: 2321-0869, Volume-3, Issue-6, June 2015

Black Box for Automobiles with Speed Control

System for Collision Avoidance
Rahul Dhod, Nikhil Panwar, Vijay Kumar Soni, Aman Kumar Sabnani

Other benefits include being able to see the condition of

Abstract The objective of this project is to design a black box driver when accident occurs. A green indicator light shows
for automobiles, which is responsible for preventing the collision that the system is armed and ready to capture an event [2]. As
by limiting the speed of the vehicle, in the areas, prone to soon as a collision is detected automatically, the indicator
accident along with recording audio and video. In case of
light will turn red and start recording all the relevant data
accident, with help of GSM & GPS modules, location and time
sent through message to pre-stored number. It may be hospital
during a pre-defined period before and after the accident. The
or police station. It is helpful for immediate rescue process and black-box is modified accordingly so that the system is
for treatment. Data collected from audio and video recorders are triggered automatically as soon as abnormal readings are
used for further inquiries like forensics and causes of accident detected by the sensors and is prioritized as shown in Table 2.
and provide ideas for improvement. so the aim is to develop an Collection of audio and video can take place by a camera
device named black box which is consist of microcontroller, which can be easily stored in a flash memory/SD card. Audio
power supply, GSM & GPS modules and sensors. and video data captured can be downloading. Events can be
displayed immediately on a television or camcorder, thus
Index Terms automobiles, black box, GSM & GPS
offering great ease for viewing recorded information. For
technology, speed control.
more efficiency, the data recorded will get refreshed on every
start of the vehicle for managing the limited data storage
capacity, unless an accident has taken place.
I. INTRODUCTION
Report from Ministry of Road Transport and Highways, Priority Event
more than 1, 42,485 people are dies each year because of
transportation-related accidents [1].In other world, one death 1 Crash
in every 3.7 minutes as shown in table 1. In order to react to 2 Erratic driving
this situation, the black box system draws the first step to 3 Manual button
solve problem. Like flight data recorders in aircraft, "Black
Box technology can now play a key role in motor vehicle Table 2. Priority order for triggering of black box.
crash investigations [5]. It records all the information, like
speed & temperature of the cabin/engine, time and location,
before and after the accidents so that it can be used to analyze The applications of Car Black-box include:
the accident accordingly. It consists of web camera;
microphone and other components are controlled by 1. Better crash research that may produce improved driver
microprocessor with embedded software and fully self education programs, safer road designs and improve
contained in a tiny, rugged black box that installs highway safety.
unobtrusively on the dash board [2]. 2. Collision data for research, data to improve vehicle
design internally and externally.
Year Number of accident Number of person killed 3. To not only record the relevant data, but also try and
2006 4,60,920 1,05,749 prevent a possible collision by limiting the speed of the
vehicle in accident-prone areas.
2007 4,79,216 1,14,444 4. Wireless communication by transmission of alert
2008 4,84,704 1,19,860 message in the event of a collision along with the time
2009 4,86,384 1,25,660 and location co-ordinates through GSM.
2010 4,99,628 1,34,513
2011 4,97,686 1,42,485 II. BLACK BOX SYSTEM ARCHITECTURE
Table 1.Number of accident and person involve. Black box for automobiles consists of a Microcontroller
Benefits customers receive are accurate, real time, easy to 89S52 core of the family 8051 embedded system used widely
interpret data, a tamperproof system, and additional security. in the industry with an ARM processor. A web camera and a
microphone are present for video and audio recording. The
Rahul Dhod, Centre for developing of advance computing (EPDT),
GSM/GPS module is also connected to the processor. Figure
Mohali. 1 shows the entire architecture of the Car Black-box [3].
Nikhil Panwar, Centre for developing of advance computing (VLSI), The data from infrared sensors are given to an encoder
Mohali. converting it from parallel to serial and transmitted wirelessly
Vijay Kumar Soni, Centre for developing of advance computing
via a transmitter module. Inside the car, the data is received by
(Embedded system), Mohali.
Aman Kumar Sabnani, Centre for developing of advance computing a receiver module and a decoder converts it back again from
(VLSI), Mohali, Punjab. serial to parallel to give it to the microcontroller. The accident

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 Black Box for Automobiles with Speed Control System for Collision Avoidance

switch is a circuitry which senses abnormal readings and

triggers the system. Various sensors such as the temperature
and speed sensor are converted from analog to digital and
given to the microcontroller. Depending on various inputs
given and bi-directional connectivity with the ARM
processor, the 89S52 controller takes decisions and varies
output given to the motor driver assembly which is in direct
contact with the motors of the car. The microcontroller not
only recognizes the crash through the interrupt pin connected
with the accident switch when car collision is detected, but
also moves the data of the memory buffer to the SD card. The
GPS (Global Positioning System) continuously tracks the
vehicles position and keeps record of accurate time. The SD
card used was selected keeping in mind newly emerging audio
video consumer electronic devices. It can support easy Figure2. Speed control dramatization
interface allowing a PC to be connected without any special
devices making it more portable [4].
IV. HARDWARE DESCRIPTION
Hardware details are depicted in Figures 3-5. AT89S52
III. WORKING OF SPEED CONTROL IN DESIRED AREA microcontroller is used in this project because of its low
The assembly for this section consists of IR sensors which power consumption and high performance. It is also the most
immediately detect the entry of vehicle in an accident prone easily available one. The IR sensor unit comprises of IR
zone. As soon as the same happens they send a level high LEDs which emit high intensity red light out of the sensor
signal which is transmitted wirelessly via the transmitter unit. If the light finds an obstacle in its path it is reflected back
module. In the next stage, via the receiver module, data are and this light it is received by the photo transistor. The
given to the AT89S52 microcontroller, which understands the reflected signal falls on the photo transistor. This ray excites
presence of car in the accident zone and hence by pre defined the base of the transistor and switches the transistor on.
logic it gives signal to the motor driver circuitry to control the
speed of the vehicle at demarcated locations. As seen in
Figure 2, as soon as the car enters a predefined zone, e.g. a
school as shown, it gets detected by sensors (marked with red
dots) and after immediate signal transmission to the
microcontroller inside the car, the speed is instantly brought
to a preset level, reducing the chances of any accidents taking
place.

Figure3. Working logic of IR sensors

The comparator compares the two voltages and switches its

output to indicate which is larger. We are using LM358 IC as
a comparator. The non inverting input terminal of comparator
is given an input signal detected by photo transistor while the
inverting input terminal is given a reference voltage with the
help of potentiometer. The comparator is used in non
inverting mode i.e. when voltage falls below reference
voltage, the output becomes low. On pin 3 i.e. non inverting
terminal of comparator the voltage is maintained above the
reference voltage. Due to which, the output is initially high.
The light emitted by the LED falls on the photo diode. The
voltage at pin 3 of Op-amp goes low. Hence the output will go
low. When the sensor is on the white surface the photo diode
receives light and turns on and voltage at non-inverting input
terminal decreases. Hence the output becomes low. Whereas
when the sensor is on the black surface no light is received by
photo transistor and it remains off. So the voltage at non
Figure 1.Block Diagram of Black Box
inverting input of op-amp is greater than that of reference
voltage at inverting input. So the output of comparator goes
high. The Encoder section is a series of CMOS LSIs for
remote control system applications. They are used to
encoding information and consist of two N address bits and
data bits.

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 International Journal of Engineering and Technical Research (IJETR)
ISSN: 2321-0869, Volume-3, Issue-6, June 2015

Figure4. Encoder and decoder assembly

The programmed data are transmitted with help of radio

frequency and via infrared transmission medium. The Figur5. Working of motor driver L298
capability to select a TE trigger on the HT12E or a DATA
trigger on the HT12A further enhances the application
flexibility of the 212 series of encoders. At receiving side, REFERENCES
decoders receive data from programmed 212 series. [4]. [1] Road accident in India Ministry of road transport and highways
which are used to compare the serial input data continuously available at hyperlink:
http://www.unescap.org/sites/default/files/2.12.India_.pdf .
with their local addresses. In case of unmatched codes, the [2] I. Papapanagiotou, D. Toumpakaris, Jungwon Lee, M. Devetsikiotis,
input data codes are decoded and then transmitted to output A survey on next generation mobile WiMAX networks: objectives,
pins. features and technical challenges, IEEE Communications Surveys
The Microcontroller receives the code for left, right, up, down &Tutorials, Vol. 11, No. 4, pp. 3-18, 2009.
[3] G. Q. Maguire, F. Reichert, M. T. Smith, A multiport mobile internet
from ARM processor at port 1. It checks the code and
router, IEEE 44th Vehicular Technology Conference, Vol. 3, pp.
accordingly provides the data on port 0 to motor of the car. To 1435-1439, 1994.
drive the motor we have used the L298 motor driver IC. Two [4] Eunryung Lee, Jung Wook Lee, Jeongho Son, OSEK/VDX-based
motors on the left side of the car are connected in parallel gateway for car black-box, ICCE 2011, IEEE International
combination & other two on the right side are connected in Conference on Consumer Electronics, pp. 521-522, USA, 2011.
[5] Myke Predko, Programming Customizing 8051
parallel combination with respect to the motor driver circuit. Microcontroller,McGraw Hill, New York, 1999.
The L298 Motor Driver are used to control the motion of
motor and two enables input which are used to on off the Rahul Dhod, Centre for developing of advance computing (EPDT),
motor. Speed o f motor is controlled by pulse width Mohali.
Nikhil Panwar, Centre for developing of advance computing (VLSI),
modulation technique (PWM). Duty cycle of PWM are Mohali.
directly proportional to voltage between VS and GND.100% Vijay Kumar Soni, Centre for developing of advance computing
duty cycle corresponds to voltage equal to Vs, 50% (Embedded system), Mohali.
corresponds to 0.5Vs and so on. The 1N4004 diodes are used Aman Kumar Sabnani, Centre for developing of advance computing
(VLSI), Mohali, Punjab.
to reduce the effect of back EMF of motor. Many circuits use
L293D for motor control, L298 is chosen here as it has current
capacity of 2A per channel at 45V compared to 0.6A at 36V
of a L293D[1]. The Embedded software used is executed by
89S52. The software is designed in assembler by Keil
software using C language in HEX [6]. The data recording
starts as soon as the accident switch is triggered and the code
is compiled to set the proper baud rate so that all the data is
updated every second.

V. CONCLUSION
In this paper we present the design of a Car Black Box. We
have successfully implemented the embedded system which
gave good results and expected functioning. The data can be
retrieved as required with great ease. The initial testing was
done with connection to a PC instead of an ARM processor
for simplicity on trial purposes and later on the actual
platform.

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