Development of eCall for Malaysia's automotive industries

—Road accidents are one of the most common causes of death among Malaysian citizens. The common problem when accident happened is drivers often have inaccurate awareness of their location, especially on interurban roads or abroad. There are also victims who are injured or trapped and they may not be able to call emergency Call Centre. The scenario may be worsen if there are no witnesses or passersby near the victims to assist them. In order to decrease the rate of fatal accident in Malaysia, eCall system is proposed. The main objective of this research is to develop eCall system that can transmits a call to the public service answering point along with certain vehicle related information using microcomputer, GSM and GPS technologies. The eCall system is able to work automatically or manually depends on the victim’s need. As such, collision detection and voice communication algorithm has been designed. For the collision detection, algorithm has been developed based on the data acquired from gyroscope and accelerometer. The location of incident has been identified using GSM cell phone and GPS location capability. The device has a corresponding infrastructure of Public Safety Answering Points (PSAPs) for the voice communication to inform the emergency emergency response unit about the accident, the level of seriousness and the location of the incident. The eCall prototype has successfully designed and developed. Experimental results shown that the prototype is able to detect collision, identify the GPS coordinates of the accident and able to transmit sound wave from speaker to microphone, to be forwarded to the emergency Call Centre

Low-cost remotely operated underwater vehicle for underwater observation purposes

This paper is about the development of a low-cost remotely operated underwater vehicle (ROV) for the observation of underwater environments without risking human life. The overall safety feature focuses on protecting internal circuits from being overloaded by any unexpected high current as well as protecting battery from being over-discharged to prolong the battery’s life. The robot has internal sensor to measure the battery voltage level along with its movement speed for safety precautions. It has a camera that sent underwater visuals to the users at the base station for underwater monitoring, observation, and exploration purposes. Floatable ballasts that hold adjustable volume of air are attached to the vehicle. The ROV has been tested on several locations for performance analysis, data collection, and navigation control; moreover, it has also won the first prize in T-Robotics Underwater Challenge organized by TSystem Malaysia