Smart battery system for emergency vehicles: Results from a pilot field study

Current emergency response vehicle (ERV) is exceedingly complicated combination of different technologies and solutions to function and perform in varying conditions. The challenge starts when there are no common agreements for how ERV´s should be design to meet requirements of all actors involved in emergency services. In Finland, Laurea University of Applied Sciences has launched a project that concentrated on emergency vehicles. The target of the project was to create user requirements for designing emergency vehicles, also to describe used ICT-systems, investigate power consumption and create an innovative demo vehicle. Due to wide range of the electrical and electronic equipment, the power consumption of modern emergency vehicle is very high. During user requirements phase users indicated strongly that battery is draining out fast and vehicle personnel have very limited possibilities to check actual state of battery health. To fulfill real user need we launched a research study that focused on finding out 1) a solution to improve battery capacity with longer battery lifetime, 2) to improve personnel awareness about battery health state and 3) to implement a proof-of-concept in real emergency vehicle. This paper is reporting those findings of the experiment and pilot field study.