AgroGuardian: An All-Terrain Vehicle Crash Detection and Notification System.

Abstract

Highlights: Off-road ATV incidents can be problematic due to long EMS alert times. An ATV crash-detection-and-report system is expected to reduce EMS response time. The developed system can accurately detect ATV rollovers. The alert time of our system is 10 times faster than the national U.S. average. Any rider using our system is 3 times more likely to survive an off-road crash.

Abstract: All-Terrain Vehicle (ATV) incidents are a common cause of injury and death in the agricultural industry in the United States. Many ATV off-road crashes on farms and ranches may result in trauma requiring immediate care, but the injured rider is unable to seek help due to their injuries. Moreover, many of these crashes occur in isolated areas that may be difficult to access and have unreliable cellular phone service, making contact with emergency medical services (EMS) challenging. This study aimed at developing and testing a low-cost ATV crash detection device (AgroGuardian) that immediately alerts EMS and emergency contacts, even when the rider is unable to take action and/or there is no cellular phone service available. AgroGuardian includes an embedded data logging system, a smartphone application, and a remote database. The embedded system includes an Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) for attitude estimation, a Global Positioning System (GPS) for location estimation, and a Rock7 modem for off-board communication. A smartphone application was developed for the users to input information about their vehicle (e.g., make and model) and emergency contacts. Also, it allows them to interact with their ATV data. An emergency signal along with the ATV's coordinates is transmitted through the Rock7 modem and received in the remote database when a rollover is detected by the system. This emergency signal is then processed and sent to EMS and emergency contacts. Our results indicated that the device: (1) is unlikely to miss an ATV rollover; (2) has a fast EMS notification time (40.7 s); and (3) the ATV localization system presented an average error of 2.34 m.