Analysis of Berla iVe Acquisitions of Vehicle Speed Data from Ford Sync Systems 2018-01-1442

Many modern automobiles’ infotainment/navigation systems store vehicle telematics and user-supplied infotainment data. This data is useful in a wide variety of analyses but is not available through traditional OEM tools. The necessity to access the infotainment module data for forensic analysis can be satisfied by utilizing the Berla iVe system. Similar to CDR/EDR technology, Berla iVe is a hardware and software tool that is used to acquire and analyze stored automotive data. However, CDR/EDR systems are generally developed in partnership with manufacturers or OEM suppliers. Berla iVe is a privately developed forensic system analogous to traditional forensic tools used to interrogate computer hard drives and smartphones. The technology is privately developed and tested. The data is then parsed using recognized forensics practices.

This research was focused on assessing the accuracy of speed data recorded in certain modules and the resulting translations reported by the Berla iVe system. While a number of manufacturers’ vehicles store a variety of infotainment data, this project was limited to Ford Sync Generation 2 (SG2) and Generation 3 (SG3) systems. A series of controlled tests were conducted under a variety of operational conditions to create GPS-based and wheel speed-based (SG3 only) vehicle speed data.

The Berla iVe-obtained speed data was compared to reference instrumentation without any smoothing or matching of recording latencies. Within each data set, the maximum error was 9 kph (the largest errors were associated with rapid speed change maneuvers), the average error was less than 1 kph, the correlation coefficient was 0.98 kph or higher, and the root mean square error (RMSE) was generally 2 kph or less. As such, the Berla iVe-obtained GPS- and wheel-based speed data are sufficiently accurate for a number of applications, including traffic accident reconstruction.