Emulation of Vehicle Speed and Impact on Vehicle Event Data Recorder

At the University of Malta research on the use of the Crash Data Retrieval (CDR) and utilization of Event Data Recorder (EDR) data was initiated by a laboratory setup to emulate a driven vehicle and collisions in the laboratory environment. This laboratory setup provided repeatable and low-cost testing of vehicle crash and multiple data retrievals from the same hardware. Vehicle speed was emulated through current pulses flipping between 7 and 14 mA as generated by the wheel sensors of the Toyota Auris 2007 donor vehicle. The four wheel speeds were initially controlled by a LabVIEW program utilizing a small electronic circuit to inject the 14 mA pulses into the vehicle's electrical harness. Subsequently a stand-alone Arduino board was used to generate the ramping up and down vehicle speed through the current injection into the four wheel speeds. Vehicle impacts were emulated by using a pendulum type impactor that was made to hit the airbag module. Different impact velocities and impact modes (front, rear, fixed or free to move) were tested. Data captured by the EDR was downloaded using the CDR and validated against the imposed test conditions.