Remote Shutdown of Heavy Duty Vehicles

Abstract: Today, vehicles are equipped with advanced electronics and complex alarm systems but still vehicle and cargo theft is a huge problem around the world. After struggling with this issue for several decades, the government in Brazil finally had enough and voted that all new vehicles manufactured or imported to the country are required to be equipped with an electronic device enabling tracking and immobilization of the vehicle if stolen. Remote immobilization could be a possible solution to prevent vehicle theft and also give the authorities a way to reclaim valuable cargo from stolen vehicles. Since Scania was already developing a telematic unit with the purpose of tracking vehicles and analyzing vehicle data, this thesis was started to investigate if it was possible to use the unit and the current system for remote immobilization as well. Security of the system would be the key issue since a flaw in security could give unauthorized access to stop vehicles and this would certainly be a disaster. A prototype system was created to test the reliability and performance of the system.