A Quebec engineer invented and designed a 100% Quebec anti-theft system that could slow the scourge of car theft in Quebec.
Jean Poulin designed the intelligent kill switch (IKS) which aims to discourage criminals who wish to steal a vehicle, regardless of where it is located. The system is installed inside the car, and the driver controls it using an application that is downloaded to their phone.
“I started with the idea of keeping the vehicle in the parking lot and not moving from there,” explains Jean Poulin during an interview with The newspaper. I also wanted to do something with today’s technologies.
“I wanted to create a product with electronics and a mobile application to have access to a double authentication system.”
When IKS is installed in a vehicle, the car owner or user must disarm the system with its app before it can be started.
“Within a radius of 100 meters, the application detects all vehicles, which are equipped with the IKS system, which you can start,” explains Poulin. You select the car you want to drive from the list that appears on your phone and you are good to go.
“If you don’t, you’ll never be able to leave him.”
And it’s the same thing for electronic keys which can be copied without the owners’ knowledge.
“Thieves will be able to get into the car, but they won’t be able to leave it because of our system. To do this, they will have to find and defeat our system. This will not be an easy task.”
If the system senses a strong enough vibration or the car moves, an alarm sounds and notifications are sent to the owner’s phone. At the same time, a call center communicates with the homeowner, like a home alarm system. Subsequently, the authorities were notified of the theft in progress.
A system to protect
To ensure high technological reliability, Poulin surrounded himself with cybersecurity experts, such as Steve Waterhouse.
“We wanted to protect our product so that we would cause a lot of misery to people with bad intentions,” emphasizes Poulin. Steve brought us a lot of points to prevent someone from being able to crack our system.
“It allowed us for our system to become more and more robust and for it to become very complicated for criminals. The security level of our system will evolve with our application.”
On the application, it is possible to put several drivers on the same vehicle. For example, members of a family of four, two adults and two children of driving age, can all have the app. The primary owner can have some sort of parental control when their children take their vehicle.
Fall deployment
Poulin and the IKSCanada.ca team hope they can do a mass deployment by the end of the year. The next summer season will be used to start production and increase road tests.
Negotiations with several insurance companies are already underway. With the purchase of an IKS system, the insured could benefit from a discount on their annual premium.
The price has not yet been determined exactly, but Poulin assures that the product will be accessible to the general public.
