Introduction

The invented system, with its related method, allows to take measurements about motor vehicle’s dynamics using a set of standard sensors available on a smartphone. These measures include acceleration and velocity, as well as attitude angle. System set up is totally standalone and doesn’t demand neither on car’s CAN network interaction nor particular assembly schemes.

Technical features

The system is composed by camera, GPS sensor, tri-axis accelerometer and tri-axis gyroscope. All those sensors are standardly integrated in a common smartphone. Acceleration, velocity and GPS sensors detect these quantities with respect to the position in which they are placed. A proper signal filtering algorithm allows to select the information useful for the vehicle’s motion reconstruction. The smartphone’s camera tracks a set of markers placed on the steering wheel and determines rotation angle. This information, integrated with other sensors’ dataset, allows to refine the filtering and enhances the signal elaboration algorithm’s reliability. Finally, the steering angle measure’s availability allows attitude angle calculation.

Possible Applications

• Amateur racing team;
• Safe/fast driving school;
• Road accident reconstruction;
• Amateur applications.

Advantages

• Vehicle’s dynamics measure can be acquired with an extremely low cost with respect to standard professional equipment;
• Measurement doesn’t require long set up phases.