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Accident Detection and Notification System using Android Smart Devices

Conference Paper · March 2018

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ICDP
ICDP
 Accident Detection and Notification System using
Android Smart Devices

Jaturapith Krohkaew Pongpon Nilaphruek

Department of Mathematics and Computer Science
AI2oT Research Unit, Faculty of Science and Technology,
Rajamangala University of Technology Thanyaburi,
Pathumthani Thailand
kjatura@rmutt.ac.th
Department of Mathematics and Computer Science
AI2oT Research Unit, Faculty of Science and Technology,
Rajamangala University of Technology Thanyaburi,
Pathumthani, Thailand
pongpon_n@rmutt.ac.th

Nongluk Promthong
Department of Mathematics and Computer Science
AI2oT Research Unit, Faculty of Science and Technology,
Rajamangala University of Technology Thanyaburi,
Pathumthani, Thailand
Nongluk661@rmutt.ac.th

Abstract In Thailand, approximately ten thousand people die
each year from 2007 to 2016 because of the accident on the road
side. One of the causes of death was the lack of access to the scene.
In this paper, we propose the Android application which
automatically notifies the emergency or accident. When an
emergency or accident occurs to the people who install this
application on their phone, the application will be automatically
activated by the immediate change to zero of the acceleration of
the smartphone. It means that their moving was stopped suddenly,
then an emergency message which contains the location of the
scene that obtained from GPS sensor of the smartphone will be
sent to the most available first emergency or accident responder.
There are two modes of emergency notification in this application.
First, the message will be delivered via the Internet connection; if
it is available. Second, it will be sent via SMS if there is no the
Internet connection. In view of the recipients of the emergency
message, they can view the map and direction to the scene. This
application can help users to improve the fast and accuracy of the
severity of the accident by offering perfect facts to emergency
services as soon as possible and saves precious life of peoples.
Keywords Accident Notification System, Smartphone, GPS,
Accelerometer
I. INTRODUCTION
As the records of the Police Information System Center [1],
there are 101,752 cases of accidents on the road side in 2007.
Also, it is decreased continually to 84,405 cases in 2016. There
are 12,492 persons were killed due to road accidents, in 2007.
The number is decreased continually to 8,369 persons in 2016.
Nevertheless, it is still approximately ten thousand people die
each year from 2007 to 2016.
This Statista [2] forecast shows the number of smartphone
users in Thailand from 2013 to 2022. In 2017, the number of
smartphone users in Thailand is estimated to reach 24.14
million, with the number of smartphone users worldwide
forecast to exceed 2.3 billion users by that time. The user renews
the smartphone much more frequently and the smartphones are
more frequently updated in software and even in hardware. As
we known that a lot of innovative technology and information
exchanging has become more notable and the smartphones gives
a new style to the usage of mobile phones for the users. The
smartphones also have additional sensors, advanced power
processor and communication interfaces, which permits to
develop traffic accident detection and notification system that is
based on sensor inputs to the smartphone without need to
interaction with a car or changing anything in the car. Usually
the smartphones are held with their owners. Therefore, an
accident detection can be done without any installation of the
accident detection and notification system on the vehicle.
On the other hand, when an accident occurs, the medicine
rescue units are notified by the communication radio or the
telephone. Sometimes, the rescue team cannot reach the scene
right on the time.
These facts are the ones that motivated us to take the
advantages of using the smartphone in the development of car
accident detection and notification system on smartphones.
II. RELATED WORK
Djajadi [3] proposed a communication system between cars
to prevent and handle an accident. The system uses an Android
based smartphone as the main platform to detect some events,
such bumpy road, speed bump, and sudden brake. It utilizes the
built-in sensors and employs Wi-Fi Direct for
the fast and cheap inter-cars communication to other Android
devices in the surrounding areas.
Sharma [4] proposed an automatic accident detection system
based on smartphone to reduce the delay between accident and
emergency response. The algorithm reliably infers an accident
based on the data collected through various smartphone sensors
despite their sensitivity and range limitations.
 Senthilkumar [5] detected the occurrence of an accident and
finding the effective path to reach the accident spot. It detects the
accident occurrence and providing timely notification and timely
help to reduce the impacts of accidents by the use of the sensors
built-in with the smartphones and the on-board sensors fitted
with the vehicle. Both the distance and the traffic, to reach the
accident spot is intimated to the relatives and to the nearby
hospital.
Chandran [6] built the smart helmet for detecting and
reporting accidents. The accident detection system
communicates the accelerometer values to the processor, which
continuously monitors for erratic variations. When an accident
occurs, the related details are sent to the emergency contacts by
utilizing a cloud based service. The vehicle location is obtained
by making use of the global positioning system. The system
delivers an information relating to the accident in real time.
Singhal [7] has implemented the concept of IoT to leverage
the nearby sensors to help the vehicles which have collided or
need any help. The collision in the vehicle which will be sensed
by the sensors. The crash sensors will measure and report the
intensity of collision. The strength of collision mapped on a scale
will then inform the respective nearby sensors in IoT, which can
come out to help the victims.
III. MATERIALS AND TOOLS
The main materials and tools include the protocols, Android
Studio editor, Node.js, JSON, PHP, MySQL, and satisfaction
evaluation form. They are explained in the following.
The main protocols in this system, MQTT is a machine-to-
machine (M2M)/Internet of Things (IoTs) connectivity protocol
[8]. It was designed as an extremely lightweight publish and
subscribe messaging transportation. MQTT was used for 2-ways
communication among clients and server. Also, HTTP protocol
[9] was used for data transmission among clients and server as
well, because sometimes the data from smartphone should be
also recorded to the system, and HTTP is an easy way to deal
with this task.
Android Studio was used to develop an application on client
side. It is recommended to be a powerful tool for developing an
Android application [10].
Node.js was used inside the server because the system must
control the data transmission between client and server. It is the
server-side JavaScript space, which is a framework for
developing asynchronous task, high-performance, and
concurrent programs [11].
JSON is a popular format for data interchange between client
and server [12, 13]. JSON was used to be the format of data
interchange in this study.
MySQL was used to be the database of the system prototype
because it is flexible enough to work well in various types of
application and it is also free [14].
For database management on the server, PHP server-side
script was used in the server side because it is one popular script
for dealing with a database system [15].
Most Android-powered devices have an accelerometer, and
many now include a gyroscope. Motion sensors are useful for
monitoring device movement, such as tilt, shake, rotation, or
swing. It can also reflect the physical environment in which the
device is sitting (for example, moving with you while you drive
your car) [16]. We derive their data to detect the occurrence of
an accident.
The Google Maps Distance Matrix API returns information
based on the recommended route between start and end points,
as calculated by the Google Maps API, and consists of rows
containing duration and distance values for each pair [17]. We
use this API to optimize selecting the nearest and fastest rescue
unit.
IV. METHODOLOGY
The methodology of this study can be divided into three
parts, as the following.
A. Reviewing the related works
Related works were reviewed especially how to apply the
smartphone in the accident detection and notification and the
communication between the smartphone and server in order to
find the appropriate solution to develop an accident detection
and notification system. This step is explained as in previous
sections.
B. Investigating the requirements
The requirements were investigated from many emergency
first responder officers interviews as shown in the Fig. 1. The
main features are illustrated as Fig. 2-3. The roles in the
proposed system are sender and receiver. After login to the
system, the sender can enable/disable the detection and
notification, stop the unintentional detection and notification,
manually notification the occurrence of the accident and capture
the photo or record the VDO clip including in the notification,
submitted to the server. Once the request from the sender has
been accepted by any rescue unit, the acknowledge screen will
be appeared in the smartphone.
Figure 1. Requirements investigation
The receiver must login to the system as well as the sender.
Once the request was submitted to the server, the receiver can
view the photo/video clip to make sure that it is the actual
accident or not. In additional, he can accept or decline the
request. If the request is accepted, then the route and direction
from the current location of the rescue unit to the scene will be
displayed in Google Map.

Figure 2. Use case diagram of Sender
Figure 3. Use diagram of Receiver
C. Designing the communication framework and system
prototype development
According to the Fig. 4, the proposed communication
framework of the system prototype consists of two main parts
including clients (sender/receiver) and server.
First, clients (sender/receiver) can be smartphones or tablets
on Android platform. Clients are the components that installed
the application; GPS sensor of the client is used to collect the
global position; accelerometer sensor, compass sensor and
gyroscope sensor are used to detect the vehicle collision, and 4G
is used to enable the Internet connection. Clients have their own
ID to tell the server when they wake up. Then they will connect
with the server using MQTT; after that, do the handshake. This
channel is main path to exchange the data between server and
clients real-time. HTTP also is applied to send clients data log
such as the locations, speed, status, and direction. JSON is the
main standard for data exchange.
Second, server is the service to manage shareable
information such as senders, receivers, and data logs. Node.js is
used to manage and filter the information from the
communication among server, and clients.
V. RESULT
The example screenshots of the application user interface are
illustrated as in the Fig. 5 Fig. 9.
Fig.5 shows the registration screen which all user, sender and
receiver, have register to the system about their information and
the mode of user, who can be either the sender (the drivers or
people who observe the accident) or receiver (the ambulances,
rescue units).
Fig. 6 illustrates that when the system detects the values from
the various sensors, which are likely to be the accidental. Then,
the emergency screen will be displayed immediately. In this
screen, there is a countdown timer waiting for the user to cancel
the alert in the case that the notification is caused by other non-
accidental causes. Otherwise, the system will assume that the
event is a real accident and will notify the emergency to the
possible nearest and available rescue unit.
Figure 4. System architecture
Fig. 7 is the manual accident notification for people who are
living near the scene. They can use the application to report an
emergency event or an accident. In this screen, the sender can
record the short VDO clip or take the photos of the event to
confirm with the receiver that the event is the real accident and
it need an urgently help.
As Fig. 8 when someone has submitted the notification to the
system, the notification screen at the receiver-side will be
displayed immediately. At this moment, the receiver can view
the photos or VDO clip attached with the notification to ensure
that the accident is really occurred or not. In the case of
unintentional notification, which has been submitted to the
receiver, who can decline the request by tapping the decline
button. However, if there is a real accident, the receiver can
accept the case by tapping the accept button and the direction
from the current location of the receiver to the scene is displayed
in the Google Map API at the bottom. We use Google Maps
Distance Matrix API to find the fastest route from the current
location to the destination location, where an accident occurred.
Figure 5. The registration screenshot
Figure 6. The screenshot of automatic accident detection and nofication
Fig. 9 shows the screenshot at the sender-side after the rescue
unit accepted the accident occurrence notification. In this screen,
the sender can see the detail about rescue unit such as the name
and contact number. At the bottom of the screen, it is the map
direction that displays the incoming rescue unit. This map will
help the sender to know the progress of the rescue unit.
Figure 7. The screenshot of manual accident notification
The system prototype was also tested by general users related
to use an accident notification service in Pathumthani, Thailand
(N=30). After such users used the application, the result from
ction shows as in the Table 1 which
on 5 criteria.
The satisfaction levels are divided into five levels including:
very satisfied (4.5-5.0), satisfied (3.5-4.49), OK (2.5-3.49),
unsatisfied (1.5-2.49), and very unsatisfied (0.0-1.49).
According to the Table 1, the average performance score of the
system prototype from general users is 3.95/5.00. It is in the
satisfied level.
The highest score is the robustness of the application and the
lowest score is the easy to use of the application. This is related
regularly said that the system
should support other platforms such as Windows Phone, iOS,
and on web browsers. However, the usability of the system is in
satisfied level; that means the system can be applied in real
condition.
Figure 8. The screenshot of notification alert at the rescue unit
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ACKNOWLEDGMENT
We would like to thank faculty of Science and Technology,
Rajamangala University of Technology Thanyaburi for
providing the infrastructure and funding to do this research.
REFERENCES
[1] Traffic accident on national highways in 2016
Annual report, Jun 2017.
http://bhs.doh.go.th/files/accident/59/report_accident2559.pdf
[2] Number of smartphone users in Thailand from 2013 to 2022
The Statistics Portal, 2017.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/467191/forecast-of-smartphone-users-
in-thailand/
[3] A. Djajadi, R. J. Putra Inter-cars safety communication system based on
android smartphone IEEE Conference on Open Systems (ICOS), 26-28
Oct. 2014, Subang, Malaysia, 2014.
[4] H. Sharma, R. K. Reddy and; A. Karthik S-CarCrash: Real-time crash
detection analysis and emergency alert using smartphone International
Conference on Connected Vehicles and Expo (ICCVE), 12-16 Sept 2016,
Seattle, WA, USA, 2016.
Figure 9. The screenshot of the acknowledge from the rescue unit [5] R. Senthilkumar, Gowtham. G; Hemalathaa. S and; Anirudh. S iCars:
Accident occurrence detection and effective path tracing using FCD
TABLE I. THE USERS SASTISFACTION OF THE PROTOTYPE SYSTEM Fifth International Conference on Advanced Computing (ICoAC), 2013
[6] S. Chandran. S. Chandrasekar and, N E. Elizabeth Konnect: An Internet
N = 30
No. criteria of Things(IoT) based smart helmet for accident detection and
Average S.D. Meaning notification IEEE Annual India Conference (INDICON), 16-18 Dec.
The response time from rescue is 2016, Bangalore, India, 2016.
1. 3.89 0.84 Satisfied
faster than traditional method. [7] Intelligent accident management
The optimization of selecting the system using IoT and cloud computing 2nd International Conference on
2. 4.00 0.85 Satisfied
most near rescue unit. Next Generation Computing Technologies (NGCT), 14-16 Oct. 2016,
Realtime monitoring incoming Dehradun, India, 2016.
3. 3.97 0.73 Satisfied
rescue process. [8] MQTT.org, "MQTT," http://mqtt.org/, 2014.
4. The robustness of the application. 4.06 0.88 Satisfied [9] T. Berners-Lee, HyperText Transfer Protocol, World Wide Web
Consortium, 1999.
5. The application is easy to use. 3.84 0.62 Satisfied
[10] DiMarzio and F. Jerome, Beginning Android Programming with
Total 3.95 0.79 Satisfied Android Studio, John Wiley & Sons, 2016.
[11] T. Stefan and S. Vinoski, Node. js: Using JavaScript to build high-
performance network programs, IEEE Internet Computing, vol. 14, no.
6, 2010.
VI. CONCLUSION AND FUTURE WORK
[12] G. Bruno and P. Trezentos, Impacts of data interchange formats on
This research proposes the application for automatically energy consumption and performance in smartphones, in Proceedings of
notifies the emergency or accident because the accidents cause the 2011 workshop on open source and design of communication, 2011.
approximately ten thousand people, who die each year from [13]
2007 to 2016 in Thailand. There are three main methods in this [14]
study including 1) reviewing the related works to find the
possible technologies and theories to solve the problems, 2) [15]
investigating the requirements from general users in the purpose 4.
of designing the functional system process which is represented [16] Motion Sensors
by use case diagrams, and 3) designing the communication https://developer.android.com/guide/topics/sensors/sensors_motion.html
framework to develop the client and server side for exchanging [17] Google Maps Distance Matrix API
the information among them. The system prototype was https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/distance-
evaluated using the via In-App evaluation and matrix/intro
the result shows that
3.95/5.00 being in the satisfied level.
In the future work, according to
said that should bind the application with some social networks
such as Facebook, Twitter, and LINE in order to widely notify
the accident immediately. Also, the proposed system must be
used continuously to many areas, in Thailand; in the purpose of
precision evaluation, and improving the rescue process.