Students create black box integrated smartphone car

WITBox: vehicle black box records data and will help unravel causes of accidents

Sao Paulo-A group of students from Joinville created a vehicle black box which records all data on the drive so that it is possible to detect the causes of traffic accidents. Still in prototype stage, the instrument is called WITBox and it connects to an application for smartphones over Wi-Fi to display the information about the vehicle.

The student Lucas Casagrande, of 24 years, says he came up with the idea for the project on behalf of a sad episode of your life. "The 15 years, my cousin died in a car accident in which I was. Until now researchers have not discovered the reason. I was asleep and witnesses told different stories, "said Casagrande.

Next to it on the part of SOCIESC, Anima Education (which counts with the HSM, reference in executive education), work on the initiative of students of Computer Engineering and Information Systems Viebrantz Alexander (26) and Eduardo Garcia (18), as well as the teacher supervisor Paulo Manseira.

The focus of the product, according to Casagrande, is the insurance market becausethis segment is more involved in traffic accidents than the automakers, which couldbe another target of their future business.

"He can become an intelligence product for insurers," said the student, who believesuntil the price of the vehicle insurance can be changed based on these data.

This vehicle black box are recorded the speed of displacement, your geo-location, the condition of the brakes, engine revolutions, possible errors detected by the on-board computer (the oil light on, for example), as well as an excerpt from the journeyrecorded on video.

As the leak of this information can injure the privacy of drivers, the data traffic via the network is encoded (encrypted), explains Casagrande. This way, only the app from the owner of the car with the correct login can interpret the data from WITBox.

The only product compatibility constraint created by students is the presence of theOBDII port on the vehicle. Despite this vehicle connector has been standardized in Brazil in 2010, the Group recommends that the cars be 2012 year.

This week, the young people present themselves in the Imagine Cup innovation, in São Paulo, which is performed by Microsoft. If they win the brazilian stage of the contest, Casagrande, Viebrantz and Garcia will compete in Seattle (USA) for the World Cup.

Still no accurate prediction of when the WITBox is a product for the end consumer,but Casagrande says he's expecting to offer it to the market within two years.