Acculeon has released the Telemetry Information System (TIS), which is designed to cost-effectively track moving violations through real-time event monitoring. Combined with the firm's Vehicle Safety Manager (VSM) software, the system records instances of speeding, tailgating, unsafe handling on curved roads, rapid acceleration, sudden stops and frequent lane changes.
“When the Federal Motor Carriers Safety Administration said it wanted to reduce commercial vehicle accidents by 41% by 2008 we knew we could create a solution that would help,” says Mahesh Chowdhary, chief technology officer and co-founder of Santa Clara, CA-based Acculeon.
“They named 21 unsafe driving behaviors that attributed to accidents,” he says. “We chose to focus on what they considered to be ‘serious moving violations.” We developed the VSM software, bundled it with our Telemetry Information System and priced it at a point where fleets would find their return on investment no later than nine months from the date of purchase.”
The system consists of three components: the in-vehicle TIS hardware (or “black box”), a communications infrastructure with cellular or WiFi link (or both), and the web-based VSM analysis and report generation software.
The TIS hardware captures and records driver events through the use of inertial sensors, a GPS receiver and an onboard geographical-map database. A gyroscope tracks frequent lane changes at high speeds and turns that are taken too tightly. The built-in accelerometer tracks rapid acceleration, sudden stops and tailgating. A proprietary map database gives information on road geometry and speed limits of road segments while the GPS receiver tracks the vehicle location where the event occurs.
The Acculeon cellular solution (TIS-C) interfaces with an external GPS receiver and existing cellular networks. The Acculeon WiFi solution (TIS-W) is a stand-alone unit with an onboard GPS receiver and 802.11b (WiFi) module. TIS-W hardware utilizes WiFi infrastructure at a customer site and/or at Acculeon authorized WiFi locations, such as truck stops.
Acculeon's VSM software enables fleet operators to view and generate various reports on unsafe driving events. The software also provides specific recommendations to help correct driver behavior problems. Exception reporting can be done to a designated e-mail address, cell phone and/or pager.
www.acculeon.com.
