Segmented and Directional Impact Detection for Parked Vehicles using Mobile Devices
This addresses damage accountability issues in car-sharing services, offering an incremental improvement by adding directional and segment-specific detection to existing motion-based systems.
The paper tackles the problem of detecting and characterizing impacts on parked vehicles using smartphones, enabling identification of impact segment, timing, and direction to help reconstruct events and potentially exonerate users in car-sharing scenarios.
Mutual usage of vehicles as well as car sharing became more and more attractive during the last years. Especially in urban environments with limited parking possibilities and a higher risk for traffic jams, car rentals and sharing services may save time and money. But when renting a vehicle it could already be damaged (e.g., scratches or bumps inflicted by a previous user) without the damage being perceived by the service provider. In order to address such problems, we present an automated, motion-based system for impact detection, that facilitates a common smartphone as a sensor platform. The system is capable of detecting the impact segment and the point of time of an impact event on a vehicle's surface, as well as its direction of origin. With this additional specific knowledge, it may be possible to reconstruct the circumstances of an impact event, e.g., to prove possible innocence of a service's customer.