Java e-call

The following seems to have been picked up by a few tech sites and ended up in my news feed this morning.

It seems to be based on a paper published by D. Acharya et.al. titled: "SAVE: a wireless Java enabled automobile accident reporting system" in the International Journal of Intelligent Defence Support Systems.

Since I don't have access to that particular journal I took a look at a similarly titled paper from the same authors over at IEEEXplore

Basically the idea seems to be to distribute a number of small wireless sensor nodes (SunSPOTs) in a vehicle in order to detect crashes, and then notify proper authorities post-crash. The idea of post-crash notification is certainly not new and many such systems are already found on the market, however these are according to the authors typically vehicle-dependent.

Installing after-market e-call systems could perhaps be a business idea, considering for example what happened with the personal navigation device (PND) market. The ability to take your PND with you when you leave your car is a big advantage. As others mentioned, most of the sensors necessary for crash detection already exist in your average smartphone, personally I would like an e-call device that calls the paramedics no matter if I crash in my car, fall off my bicycle or off of a cliff when hiking.