Crash: Completed Project

A video demonstration of CRaSH and the project poster are presented below. For more information, please see the project report and the project code.

Conclusions

The completed project was presented to a panel of faculty and industry professionals. Questions from the panel focused primarily on defining project purpose and justifying wireless implementation. Although we addressed panel inquiries sufficiently, there are some additional observations and revisions I have developed in the interval since presenting the project. 

CRaSH facilitates wireless exchange of information in the event of a collision. I maintain project viability for this purpose, yet I now realize the essence of CRaSH (i.e., V2V communication) could have been examined more effectively by pursuing a different project. Following the completion of CRaSH, I had the opportunity to write a research paper on connected vehicles and active safety systems—this research revealed the error in narrowly focusing our project on hit-and-run collisions. Specifically, because initiating V2V communication in CRaSH requires a collision stimulus, much of our work needlessly focused on replicating collision-sensing technologies that are ubiquitous in the automotive industry (e.g., airbag deployment). Collision detection development was a time-consuming distraction peripheral to our main concern of V2V communication. In retrospect, I believe there are two possible projects that would address V2V communication more effectively: vehicle platooning and vehicular ad-hoc networks (VANETS).

This project has presented many teachable moments both during and after its development. In my role as the team leader, I gained invaluable experience in a number of areas:  adhering to project deadlines, negotiating teammate strengths and weaknesses, and effectively communicating with teammates/superiors. As a contributor to the project, I strengthened my technical skills in hardware interfacing, software development, and unit testing. In summarizing the project for this website, I recognize areas of potential improvement and I am inspired to pursue new projects based on this knowledge. I will gladly utilize my experiences from this project to improve myself as a computer engineer, and I look forward to utilizing CRaSH as a platform for a future vehicle-platooning project.