A Centralized Real-Time Driver Assistance System for Road Safety Based on Smartphone

This chapter proposes a smart system to increase road safety. The main idea is to exploit existing technologies and devices, as the smartphone and the existing cellular network, to implement a centralized, real-time, Advanced Driver Assistance System. Each vehicle is equipped with a smartphone that periodically computes and sends vehicle’s global position and speed through GPRS or UMTS network. A centralized server snaps all running vehicles into digital maps and implements safety algorithms to detect potential dangerous situations. The prediction of a prospective crash generates a warning on the smartphone to alert the driver. This work presents the general hardware and software architecture and the implementation of two use cases. Finally, an evaluation of the critical aspects of the system is provided.