The Challenge:
In My City which is densely populated, City planners find it difficult to cope with the dynamic changes in requirement of daily (Bus or transport) services and to improve the efficiency of the services and meet demands.
The Challenges faced with the existing system is on how to meet demands and expectations of commuters and how to mass move commuters in an efficient manner. Commuter demands vary across the timezone within a day.
We have peak (i.e. early morning) hours and non-peak (i.e. mid-day) hours. peak hours there is a exponentially increase in demand for (Bus) services by School, College, Office goers. Transport planners currently uses other out-dated technology to monitor demand on a particular route for e.g. a) history of collection made per bus, per route, b) traffic movement, c) number of pre-paid passes issued, d) cameras installed at congested bus stops, e) area or geography for e.g. IT hub, etc. however no real-time information to collect (commuter's demand) exists in place without which there is chaos on the roads due to a) over crowding of buses in same route, b) poor utilization or optimal use of buses, c) increase fuel cost due too many buses ply on same route etc.
This initiative is towards the "Smart-City project - Connected Bus Transport System" and its objective is to collect data in real-time of daily commuters using the Bus services. This includes monitoring Commuters in every Bus-stops and Buses plying on the road doing so we can not only improve the service but also add revenue to the system, I have some ideas as to how we can achieve the fund raising part (i mean by increase in revenue).
The Solution (Proposed):
Idea here is to collect as much data points and build a Commuter's Profile (nothing personal here, its all voluntary) for e.g.
1. When a commuter arrives at a bus stop and how long has he waited for the Bus
2. How frequent is a commuter using Bus service and on which routes
3. How many commuter are present in each of the Bus stops,
4. Did the Bus arrive (Stop) at each designated bus-stop.
5. How long before a bus arrives between stops
6. How many commuters present in the bus (overcrowding in Buses)
7. Ticket-less and Cashless payment, amount is debited calculating entry/exit from bus.
8. Arrival status of next bus display at every Bus-stop.
9. Arrive, waiting, Leave time of Buses at a given Bus-stop
10. Presence of overcrowding of Buses at a given stop
11. Number of buses operating or breakdown or at shelter and not used etc.
Technical Requirements:
1. RFID card (BLE Enabled):
This is a battery (coin cell) operated card with BLE enabled and contains only the ID number of a matching profile of a commuters store in cloud database. This way even if the card is lost there is no threat of users personal data being leaked. User profile is maintained in a database store in AWS Cloud and upon registration a unique 128 bit ID is created and stored in this card.
This card activates in the presence of BLE Beacons and also has the option to connect when the user approaches a bus stop and having calculated the distance it can sense if a user is at the bus-stop and waiting. Alternately, the user can swipe his card with a BLE reader to trigger connection. This will allow the monitoring of a users data points.
User can walk away or swipe again to convey his intention of not using the Bus service.
2. IoT Access Points (Lora/4G/3G + Wi-Fi) or Mobile-operator Hotspots:
IoT AP is installed at every Bus-stop and suppose to be the backbone for providing Internet access to/from back-end Cloud AWS Server.
It can provides service related updates (for e.g. Bus and driver info, route map, etc) fetch from cloud and for the purpose of Displaying.
3. Display Screen:
This could be a regular HDMI TV or a display Monitor installed at every Bus stop for the purpose of providing Service updates.
It is connected and controlled by the Cypress PSoC Pioneer Kit. Content is delivered over Wi-Fi.
4. Cypress PSoC Prototyping and Pioneer Kits:
a) PSoC
6 WiFi-BT Prototyping Kit (CY8CPROTO-062-4343W)
- This device is installed in Buses and interacts with Commuters BLE Enabled RFID Card. Using BLE Beacons it connects and monitors the presence of Commuters inside the Bus.
- A Card reader positioned at the gate activates the tracking (monitoring) of the ID card via BLE.
- Upon Arrival at Bus stop, using Wi-Fi it dumps (i.e. shares) commuter data via AP to Cloud AWS Server.
b) Cypress PSoC 6 WiFi-BT Pioneer Kit (CY8CKIT-062-WIFI-BT)
- This device operates the Display Monitor for service related updates.
- This device keeps track of many data-points of Commuters presence at Bus stop.
- Uses BLE Beacons to connect with onboard PSoC kit in every bus to calculate distance, this can translate into
a) arrival of bus at a stop,
b) presence of Bus at a stop or is it parked for too long at a distance from the stop.
- Connects over Wi-Fi to a stationary Hotspot or IoT Access Point to share data points to AWS Cloud.
5. Artificial Intelligence:
- AI runs as a service on both PSoC kits and uses the "Clustoring based Density-Method" to determine the presence of Commuters presence at the bus-stop or inside the bus.
- Uses both density clustering and Beacons (distance measure from bus-stop) to determine Commuters from non-commuters.
- Computing can optionally be offloaded to a similar service running in AWS Cloud so as to minimize power and efficiency of the PSoC kit.
6. Location Tracking:
- (Optional) GPS, is used to track the Bus in real-time and share co-ordinates to AWS Cloud database.
- BLE Beacons, is used to track Buses and commuters at bus-stop and inside bus with assistance of Artificial-Intelligence to determine precision.
7. AWS Cloud:
- Stores the database which contains sensitive user profiles and data-points.
Also contains/stores
- Bus and Driver info (profile),
- Bus-stops profiles i.e amenities (like water, sitting area, etc),
- Designated Route Maps and planner
- Numbers of buses operating
- Number of RFID cards in total and issued with their unique 128-bit UUID.
- Offline or online status monitoring of Bus-stops.
8. User APP:
Is a customized app requirement for both the Staff and commuters
Staff App (Below actions are done at Staff Office)
- Register a User by creating his profile into the database
- Create a 128-bit UUID and tag the user to the same
- Help write UUID into the RFID Card, this uniquely identifies a User profile to a Commuter.
- Load money into the user profile. User has to pre-pay to get the card issued.
Commuter App
- Used on mobile for self registration of user profile and activate RFID card via Bluetooth or NFC in mobile device.
- Can purchase card from any retail store and is writable once during registration.
- Pre- loads money into App wallet. User data and wallet balance is always store in Cloud Database.
Note:
Due to complete Lock-down since Feb mid until May 31st and non-functioning of courier service or shopping orders for components etc no progress or headway into this Challenge occur however,
I plan to continue on this idea for the sake of completing it.
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