In prior studies researchers have been interested in automating the process by which the Simulation Model of Automobile Collisions (SMAC) is used to reconstruct an accident. The SMAC program requires an initial approximation of the impact speeds and the positions and orientations at impact. And with a SMAC reconstruction you can sometimes get a reasonably close match and then spend many hours on iterative runs trying to match as best as possible the overall body of physical evidence.
The prior research on automation of SMAC (during the time period 1975-1980) was constrained by computer time and resources. Those research projects were performed on mainframe computers where all applications included charges for CPU time and memory resources. Today with gigahertz Pentium computers and unlimited memory, aside from the initial cost of the computer, the cost per SMAC run is virtually free and the time for a run is measured in seconds rather than minutes.
This paper describes an automatic iterative procedure which can quickly and efficiently iterate to a “best match” of the physical evidence with SMAC. Quantitative measures of the overall “fit” to the evidence, which guide the procedure, are discussed. Representative results from applications to experimental tests are presented.
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