Student Projects
Contact Information
University: St Joseph's College of Engineering and Technology, Palai (Kerala)
Team Members (with year of graduation): (1) Subin Simon Thottiyil , (2) Simon K. Jose , (3) Sumimol Varghese
Faculty Advisers: Mr. Mohith John, Asst. Prof. (Dept of Applied Electronics & Instrumentation)
Email Address: sumielizabethvarghese@gmail.com
Submission Language : English
Project Information
Title: Driving Licience Test Automation for LMV using LabVIEW
Description:
According to the world health organization (WHO), India is one of the largest countries that have the highest number of accidental deaths in the world. National crime records bureau and the ministry of home affairs states that a major share of this comes from road accidents. In the year 2009 alone, 4.9 Lakhs of road accidents killed more than 1.25 Lakhs people leaving another 5 Lakhs of people injured. I.e. one road accident in every minute and one death in every four minutes in India. The planning commission of India had assessed a loss of rupees 55, 000 crores completely on account of road accidents in India.
The ministry of road transport and highways says that three out of four road deaths are caused by human error, mostly because of speeding and bad driving habits. The following major reasons demand a novel technique to rival the traditional system of driving license test-taking:
• Existence of corrupt practices in issuance of driving license.
• The independent tests performed indicated that a close to 60 percent of license holders did not even have to take the licensing exam and 54 percent of them were unqualified to drive.
• While the official fee of obtaining a license is RS. 450, an average license holders ends up paying about RS. 1080.
All this suggests that a new methodology has to be developed and implemented so that such errors can be avoided in the future.
Products
Software: NI LABVIEW 8.6.1
Hardware: NI USB 6009
The Challenge
To develop a system for improving the standards of license issuing mechanism presently followed in the state of Kerala & in order to provide road safety to reduce bad driving habits as well as corruption.
In the present state, the examiner must be on field during the test. This includes a dedicated officer like the regional transport officer (RTO) himself fixing his stare at the many number of test takers undertaking their license test. This in fact leads to common human errors like observation, favoritism and corruption. Presently the movements of a light motor vehicle (LMV) like car, jeep etc are guided along an ‘H’ track. The test taker has to move his vehicle along the ‘H’ track in order to complete his driving test (this is the most commonly used driving test in Kerala). One or more inspectors from the motor vehicles department has to stay long hours in the field wasting large amount of man-hours. A real good test-taker cannot be accurately found from the existing driving license test.
The major challenge in the new system is the acquisition of reliable data from the field. Also a compatible software application with database facilities so as to store data from the test-taker and the field was a major development concern. Hence to reach the final goal: ‘to ensure that the entire process of the driving test becomes completely automated which leaves no scope of individual discretion and negotiation’ was the final challenge.
The Solution
In this novel practice, as a first step, the candidate enters the details on a front end generated on labview 8.6.1 software. The system will check for the age limit and process the entered data so that the test-takers data can be used to compile his final report. Once the front end ‘start; button is pressed, the candidate can proceed to the vehicle for undertaking his test. The IR sensors long the sides of the newly proposed ‘H’ track checks the performance of the candidate. This solves the problem of acquiring a feasible field data. Using a computer system the movement of vehicle along the track can be monitored. The system will give a “test failed” message if the candidate goes out of the track or hits a post kept at its edges or if the vehicle stops abruptly. On the successful completion of the test the system gives a “test passed” message.
At once, when the ‘stop’ button is pressed, the candidate will get the detailed test result from the system itself. Thus the intervention of a human observer like a responsible vehicle inspector can be completely avoided eliminating all the chances of errors, favoritism & bribery. This will ensure a nonstop and non tiring mechanism to select only the best of the best drivers those who are fit to enter the roads of India.
SYSTEM CONFIGURATION:
The system setup consists of the following:
. 8 pairs of Photosensor called RiF50 from v2.
. NI labview 8.6.1
. NI USB 6009 with 12 Digital I/O lines (TTL)
After stepping over a real time Photosensor like rif50 from v2 (Italy), the long awaited search for a field data provider was solved.
These sensors were placed on specially fabricated PVC piped poles mounted on spring stands as depicted below:
In the figure above the poles made of PVC were placed along the edges of the ‘H’ track as shown. It is on these poles that the sensors are mounted as shown below:
All the transmitter and receiver sensors have to be mounted as represented in the figure above, so that reception of wrong receiver data may cause interference to the test.
The outputs from these sensors (field data) are first allowed to be attenuated externally before being acquired by the DAQ card hardware which in turn acts as an interface between the field data and the computer system on which a labview version 8.6.1 has been used to realize the controller block and test-takers data field front end.
Software Implementation
According to the system configuration followed, a hardware implementation followed by a visual basic front end computer interface employs huge amount of man-hours. I.e. to get such a system functioning it can take about 4 months (starting from scratch and to end till success). Such a system was easily implemented by using a combination of NI labview 8.6.1 and the NI USB 6009 hardware. Thus this software reduced the cost as well as maintained a well established and user-friendly interface.
Using the software for implementation involved, building a whole microcontroller based system on the labview block diagram interface along with the user data input provisions. All this was possible due to the ease of coding used in labview. With such a useful data acquisition hardware like NI USB 6009 with 8 I/Os, the data from the field was ready to be used.
Note: These screen prints were generated from a single implementation but due to the depth of coding involved, it was made Impossible to attain a single screen print for the block view.
After the circuit diagram was established on the software interface, user friendly push switches on the interface enabled a person to control the start & stop of the ‘H’ test:
Pressing the ‘start’ button on the interface could start the test, while
Pressing the ‘stop’ button on the interface resulted in the stopping of the test.
(A reset button was also provided so that the display on the software interface could be cleared and reset for the next driver/test-taker)
Using the labview software the front end of this setup was successfully made as depicted below:
A system ready indication on the front end shows that the software is ready for processing both the inputs from the field and the license test taker’s datum.
A system ready indication on the front end shows that the software is ready for processing both the inputs from the field and the license test taker’s datum.
FIELD DATA:
When these sensors are in-line with each other the receiver sensor output generates a high. In the initial state of the test, after all the sensors have been aligned on the ‘H’ track, all the sensor out will be high. These 8 outputs are allowed to enter the daq and finally connected to the host pc. This is the essential field data.
TEST-TAKER’S DATA:
The person taking the driving liscence test can fill in his datum on the software genrated frontend as depicted below:
TEST TAKING:
Once the mandatory details are completed, then the test taker can get ready for his test by entering the vehicle. On his word the controller can press the ‘start’ button on the software interface (just as in the case of the hardware). This will mark the commencement of the test (for the controller at the PC interface, the LCD display will show processing...).
If all goes well and the driver returns his car safely without any deviations from the ‘H’ track, the controller can now press the ‘stop’ button on the software interface (just as in the case of the hardware). This will point to the end of his test (for the controller at the pc interface, the LCD display will show some indication). He can now get his result at the software interface as depicted below:
But once the test-taker hits a post or goes out of track, the corresponding sensor output becomes zero (indication on controller shows where the driver has hit). Thus the test taker automatically gets his “test failed” result on the software interface as depicted below:
As soon as the result is out, the software interface prompts the controller to generate a result report as shown below:
Here if and if only all the mandatory fields are completed the result will be obtained, else the software prompts the user with a series of ‘error messages’ until all the details are furnished. The result document can be saved for both future use and as a valid document (as instructed by the regional transport officer) for the test-taker.
The detailed report of the test taker based on the fields that he has entered can be printed out which will serve as a valid license until the specified validity.
BENEFITS OF USING LABVIEW BASED VISUAL DESIGN APPROACH:
- Being user-friendly this software makes coding simpler
- Reducing the programming complexity is an advantage of labview that has to be specified and exploited
- Instruments can be virtually designed hence reducing the work space
- Vast amount of toolboxes makes labview application to real-time experiences simpler.
- Errors can be easily identified, quantified and rectified almost instantly.
BENEFITS OF APPLICATION:
The benefits of implementing a completely automated driving license test are:
- The intervention of any high ranked personnel need not be present, just a common-man used to control the pc interface is sufficient.
- Camera surveillance can be an optional key to add an additional watch over the test-taker, which can be guided to the regional transport officer’s pc.
- Since human interactions are minimized, any scope of observation error, favoring or bribing can be avoided improving the transparency of the test.
- By using the labview software combined with the DAQ card the cost of completion of the project was found to be significantly less as compared to hardware implemented system.
CONCLUSION:
The experimental platform provided by NI labview opened new ideas to convert real-time processes to simulatory results. Using labview seems to be a better approach because the integration with hardware is so seamless. This whole new system was made so easy-to-use and cost-efficient so that its implementation would lead to better performance of people on roads hence saving valuable lives.
OTHERS
Video Link(s): (1) http://youtu.be/sP52ebAFQWo
