Solutions of Wireless Sensor Networks for Driver Associate

Recent advances in wireless sensor networks have led to a collection of small sensor nodes capable of performing a monitoring function suitable for use in Driver Associate. An external sensor system is an organization of many sensor nodes working together to achieve a common goal. This sensor system has been integrated into the Driver Associate and is able to detect moving objects within a 15 foot range of a Driver Associate equipped test vehicle. The Driver Associate is a project for the future intelligent vehicle system that rides with the driver and provides an added measure of safety to both car and driver. The purpose of this paper is twofold. We first discuss the external sensor system middleware and then address sensor platform design. System middleware consists of three key components which are the target, data and interface servers. In the sensor platform, each sensor node contains a power unit, data acquisition and transfer units, and a process unit. A prototype illustrates the effectiveness of a wireless sensor network for our Driver Associate project.