Laboratory Experiments Using a 2007 Toyota Auris Event Data Recorder and Additional Data from CAN Bus

An experimental campaign based on the harness and Event Data Recorder (EDR) of a production vehicle (Toyota Auris 2007, Generation 02EDR) was setup for laboratory experiments. The experiments involved triggering non-deployment events in the EDR by hitting the Airbag Control Module (ACM) with a pendulum style impactor with different pendulum weight, in frontal and rear directions and at different initial angles. The ACM was hit in three different conditions: ACM fixed, ACM free to move and ACM launched towards impactor. The wheel speed sensors were emulated with the same 7/14 mA pulses such that the vehicle was simulated to be moving with a ramping up and down speed during the impact. This was done such that the EDR data has vehicle speed in both its pre and post-crash data. The Bosch Crash Data Retrieval (CDR) tool was used to download the EDR data. Data from these experiments is shown and discussed. An in-house built sniffer was utilized to filter and store the relevant CAN bus data. Such data provides additional information such as the four wheel speeds rather than just one vehicle speed available in the EDR data and at a much faster data rate. It was noted that the vehicle speed is the average of the front wheel speeds even if the front wheel speeds are very different from each other (indicating loss of traction with ground or slip/skid).