Research Projects

Crash Inspections

The purpose of the Crash Inspections project is to collect data from real-world crashes involving  current generation vehicles to help better understand the safety performance of these vehicles.  This retrospective study sources vehicles that have had one or more restraint systems deployed and towed from the crash.  Once consent has been obtained, comprehensive data is collected.  The knowledge gained from this process will be used to enhance the safety performance of future vehicle designs.

Traffic Probe

This project aims to determine the minimal percentage penetration of required probe vehicles in order to offer service improvement, while optimising the flow of transmitted data between probe vehicles and infrastructure.  The use of GPS tracking to monitor a vehicles progression along various roads can greatly increase the TMC coverage area, while also serving as a real time verifier of inductive loop systems, and thus increasing the resolution of the existing urban traffic congestion reporting services.

Wireless Communication Standards Framework

This project addreses the fragmentation within the communication industry as it affects automotive wireless application and will aim to follow world's best practice by, creating a cluster of manufacturers, similar to the "Bluetooth Special Interest Group" to develop standards.  

Fully Embedded Telematics Demonstrator

The Fully Embedded Telematics Demonstrator Project follows the success of the Internationally renowned "Australian Telematics Signature Vehicle" (AT-Signature) - debuting on such technology shows as "Beyond Tomorrow", "CeBIT", various USA Cable TV, and in numerous print media articles throughout 2005-2006.  The project is to research and deliver a fully functional current production demonstrator vehicle with advanced telematics services, while complying with stringent HMI guidelines to minimise driver distraction.

Standardised Approach for Emergency Vehicles (SAFE) - completed, contact AutoCRC for details

Emergency vehicles such as Police, Fire and Ambulance are increasingly using sophisticated technologies and equipment to improve their operational effectiveness.  This equipment, however, is typically bolted-on to existing vehicles without considering the safety, power and device integration implications. The purpose of this project is to gain an understanding of the emergency driver user-interface and ICT requirement issues, and to develop a standard interface platform for addressing ergonomic design, ICT power requirements and safety. 

Project Leader: Valdim Mustafa VPAC
Project Participants: NSA, MUARC, Monash, VPAC

Occupant Protection

A number of improvements to occupant protection are outcomes sought from this project. Improved tools for testing child safety systems and improved anchorages to improve child protection in front and side impacts. Validation of brain models using real life data will be used to improve occupant safety and new virtual engineering tools for vehicle design will be developed to reduce pedestrian impact injuries.

Human Machine Interface & Driver Distraction

Encompasses theoretical and experimental studies of cognitive work load and driver distractions (real and simulated) and the development of guidelines and standards. A conjoint study will determine the relative benefits of crash avoidance technologies ranked against their roll in reducing harm.

Project Leader: Prof Brian Fildes, Monash - Tel 03 9905 4369
Project Participants: Holden, MUARC, Monash, Swinburne

Vision Based Collision Avoidance

A range of collision detection systems will be developed focusing on vision recognition of stationary and moving objects.

Voice Recognition Research

The development of natural language recognition technology for Australian conditions and accents, capable of operating in noisy motor vehicle environments. This natural voice recognition technology with robust noise filtering in a single chip is expected to have wide ranging commercial applications.