Buses as Mobile Sensing Platforms?

Roland Piquepaille writes "According to European researchers, modern buses could be used as mobile sensing platforms, sending out live information to be used to control traffic and detect road hazards. The 3.83 million euro EU-funded MORYNE project was completed in March 2008 with a test in Berlin, Germany. During this test, the researchers 'equipped city buses with environmental sensors and cameras, allowing the vehicles to become transmitters of measurements, warnings and live or recorded videos to anyone allowed to access the data.' "

Comments

Works great in New Zealand

[EmbeddedJanitor]

One of the biggest hurdles to bus usage is that the customers don't know when the next bus is coming. Here in NZ we have a bus monitoring system that addresses this. At each bus stop, there's a low cost and reasonably vandal proof display with a wireless link. It tells you when the next bus is expected to arrive. This uses real-time bus tracking information which is pretty accurate. Each bus has a GPS and sends data to a central machine which does the tracking and sends out info updates to the terminals every minute or so.

The result has been a huge improvement in bus user satisfaction (and the number of passengers).

The system as a whole tracks bus speeds, congestion etc and the longer term data is used to plan extra buses etc.