Innovative complete solution for health safety of children unintentionally forgotten in a car: a smart Arduino‐based system with user app for remote control

Abstract

This study describes an innovative complete car control system against children abandonment in unattended vehicles. Even if systems of this kind are already available in the automotive market, other solutions are currently object of intense researches by several important Research and Development centres or under patent procedure. In this study, a description of the technologies already adopted in the currently used car control systems and in those that are in research and testing phase too is provided. Then, it will be introduced to the proposed control system, which enables to improve all the described systems by providing innovative technologies and functionalities. The proposed system implements a microwave motion sensor, two infrared sensors, a carbon dioxide sensor, a temperature/humidity sensor, a vocal detector and a micro-camera. These acquisition devices are connected to a microcontroller board that is able to combine all acquired data for detecting the alarm scenario and consequently acting some warning procedures: alarm short message service transmission with vehicle Global Positioning System position, vehicle's horn activation and/or car windows lowering. Thanks to such a wide set of sensors, the system can correlate the acquired information in order to ensure a good detection capability in every condition in which it can operate.