Engineering student develops award-winning vehicle diagnostic device

The new plug-in vehicle diagnostic device aims to benefit drivers, carmakers and auto insurance companies, all at the same time.   

Archit Agarwal, an engineering student of UPES, has bagged the Gandhian Young Technological Innovation Award 2018 for developing On Board Diagnostic Data Analysis System (OBDAS) for the automobile industry.

OBDAS is based upon data interpretation of a vehicle through on-board diagnostic system. The device collects real time information of the vehicle and is also capable of tracking other variables such as the speed and odo reading. The main aim of this plug-in technology is to allow automobile and auto insurance companies to be able to track real-time data of a car from the dedicated embedded system, which can further be used in system diagnostics and performance evaluation of the car.

OBDAS can also store the vehicle owner’s personal information on its cloud server. In the event of an accident, it would connect to the nearby emergency helplines and also share the vehicle’s location and owner's details with the emergency services.

Additionally, this device will help insurance companies better assess the damaged vehicle by obtaining real time telematics about history of the customer’s car and take accurate decisions on insurance policies. Another nifty safety on OBDAS comes in the form of an inbuilt anti-theft system with surveillance functionality.

Talking about his experience, Archit said, ‘To be at the Rashtrapati Bhavan and receiving this prestigious award in the presence of our President for my technological innovation was an overwhelming experience for me. The competition was extremely challenging with close to 13,000 projects from over 500 colleges across India. OBDAS is a low-cost universal solution for vehicles, and its many benefits include sending location of the vehicle in case of an accident to emergency services that may prevent deaths due to vehicular accidents.’