An innovative SME involved in Manchester’s CityVerve project is helping to enhance motorist safety in the North West.
Technology start-up firm, Satsafe develops ‘Internet of Things’ (IoT) telematics devices, more commonly known as in-vehicle black boxes, that are already being increasingly used by insurance firms and fleet managers to monitor driver behaviour.
Satsafe’s latest innovation, the TelematiCam, combines its driving monitoring technology with intelligent in-built GPS and accelerometers to detect whether a motorist has had a serious crash. Once the app has been accredited, the system will be able to automatically alert the emergency services to the precise location and time of an incident, presenting a life-line to those who may be injured.
The TelematiCam will also record high definition video, allowing drivers, emergency services and insurers to more accurately assess the cause of a crash.
This new product, which could help revolutionise driver safety has been developed with support from Liverpool City Region business support programme, LCR 4.0.
Working with project partners the Virtual Engineering Centre (VEC) and the Hartree Centre, Satsafe embarked on a project to connect the dashcam, a mobile app and a cloud platform.
Through their specialist expertise, the VEC built a virtual prototype to demonstrate how Satsafe could connect all components together. While the team at the Hartree Centre helped to enhance the driver scoring and crash detection algorithms as well as the system architecture for the cloud analytics platform.
Michael Schraps, programme manager for LCR 4.0 from the VEC, said: “The technologies that Satsafe are developing offer serious safety benefits for road users and perfectly demonstrate how Industry 4.0 technologies can have a new and positive impact on our day-to-day lives.
“The LCR 4.0 programme is very much a collaboration and it was great to see the skills of both the VEC and the Hartree Centre come together on this project to take the TelematiCam to the next level of development.”
Satsafe is already the lead partner for road safety as part of CityVerve, the UK’s £15 million (€ 16.79 million) city demonstrator project in Manchester bringing together the brightest minds and pioneering uses of the Internet of Things (IoT) to deliver a smarter, more connected city.
Working alongside Manchester City Council and large taxi firms in the city, Satsafe is helping to encourage good driving practices through the installation of telematics black box systems. The black boxes can identify drivers with low scores which may indicate that they could benefit from re-training, presenting safety benefits for the driver, passengers and other road users.
Stuart Millward, Satsafe’s founding director said: “This project and the support from the VEC has enabled us to address a range of technical challenges around product and service design without which, it would have taken much longer to solve”.
Part funded by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), the LCR 4.0 programme is being delivered in partnership by some of the region’s key knowledge and scientific assets: the University of Liverpool (through its Virtual Engineering Centre), Liverpool City Region Local Enterprise Partnership (LCR LEP), Liverpool John Moores University (Faculty of Engineering and Technology), the Science and Technology Facilities Council’s Hartree Centre and Sensor City.
LCR 4.0 is a part of the Liverpool City Region Local Growth Hub.
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