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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.' "
So what's the difference between this and the traffic/CCTV cameras which are already becoming ubiquitous? If a society wants to go this route, this seems like more hassle, if you ask me.
If you can read this... 01110101 01110010 00100000 01100001 00100000 01100111 01100101 01100101 01101011
In soviet England, bus watches you.
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How about sensing when buses aren't meeting their route schedule requirements and using this data to improve the public transit system? A somewhat "direct" application to be sure, but one that's sorely in needed in places like metro Atlanta that depend on MARTA for mass transit. I can't even begin to estimate how many times buses have either been substantially late, not shown up at all, or passed right by a stop with waiting passengers. It actually prompted me to buy a car years ago.
512 MB RAM, 20 GB disk, 200 GB transfer, five datacenters. $19.95/month.
The US government and auto makers are working on the VII initiative http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle_Infrastructure_Integration to collect similar information using all vehicles as probes. The idea is to mix existing electronic systems in vehicles with short range communications. That way cars could 'talk' to the road, the road could talk to cars, and cars would talk to each other.
FTA:
The computer can also send alerts to a public transport control centre via a variety of wireless connections, including mobile radio systems, wifi or wimax networks, and UMTS (3G).Does anyone know if it's IP? And what they're using for routing?
It'd be fun to design a mesh routing protocol for mobile stations with no less than four radio links with very different characteristics...
Sorry - you're wrong. (not on the bendy buses, their introduction was just stupid, but on the bus lanes). Bus lanes are great, if you're using the tube and the bus to get around. If you're silly enough to want to pay the city their access tax, they you should be stuck in traffic. I'll be in the bus, reading the paper. :)
-- All this knowledge is giving me a raging brainer.
I thought this was going to be in reference to a flurry of bus-related accidents, like these here, but apparently Iowa just has the dumbest bus drivers evar. "Hey, great," I thought, "they're going to have buses that will sense when people are near and not let you hit them." Then come to find what it's really about... and I'm not sure if I'm disappointed or not.
This is similar to Sam Madden's CarTel project at MIT.
You wait half an hour for a sensor then three come along at the same time!
AT&ROFLMAO
I can tell you don't live in Swansea.
They've just spent millions of pounds and several years carving up the main roads through the centre into "metro" and normal lanes, supposedly to accommodate bendy buses here. It's caused no end of disruption and queues, the new system is a nightmare to navigate for everyone - drivers, cyclists and pedestrians alike - and I've yet to see sight or sound of a single bendy bus to make the whole job worthwhile.
So just remember, no matter how bad the roads are in your area, it could always be worse. Unless you live here.
Nobody else has this sig.
Here in Melbourne, Australia, we have Smart Buses that have sensors built on the bus, combined with readers at most stops along each route. The same stops also have electronic displays that show the next 3 buses scheduled combined with their ETA, based on realtime data retrieved from previous sensors along the route.
The type of system described in the article wouldn't necessarily work here in Melbourne, because quite often the same routes are set up with priority traffic signalling with dedicated bus lanes. So the data collected is valid only for bus traffic, not for other road users.
I've come to believe that such a mass of raw data is less vivid and meaningful than the word picture created in a single sentence by a human interpreter.
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.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
São Paulo, Brasil, tests its system http://www.sptrans.com.br/olhovivo/
The sensors provide traffic info to colorize the map. Despite the creepy interface, the system is intended to provide roughly the status of traffic. Besides it is integrated to displays at some of the stops which brings schedules and delays information.
However, the information cannot be understood as reliable for car traffic: buses do it their own way, both retarding each other and somewhat benefiting from dedicated lanes.
There are no shortcuts to surpass a global city clot, except... to get up earlier.
I am not convinced it's all that useful to have a videocamera on a bus (hours and hours of boring video that someone has to watch), but I think it would be beneficial to have a real-time GPS tracker on every bus, train, and other public transport. If you are waiting for a bus and it's late, you could pull out your cell phone and figure out exactly where it is.
"Ooooh!, This is interesting, Bob. Every bus except 003729 shows real bad air quality and big queues of traffic. Pull it in and check out the sensor pack" .... ...
"Hi Jeff! I am at the depot, and it seems that bus 003729 had its sensor pack attached to the FRONT bumper of the bus by mistake!"
They whose government reduces their essential liberties for temporary security, receive neither liberty nor security.
Wow... bad commute into work this morning?
Mine was just fine. Thanks to busses, and the underground, allowing me to sit back and read the paper on my way to work.
How can you possibly try to claim that increased public transport is a bad thing? The more busses people are taking, the less cars there are to get in your way on whatever journey it is that you so desperatly need to get to the end of without having to wait at any point.
The biggest "hoax" or whatever you call it is that you can buy a car which can go faster than maximum speed limit and pay extra taxes and also for speeding violations. Just think about it how much money could be saved if cars could only have 100 HP. However one could wonder and say, well you can still buy a knife and kill, ... well you will not buy a bigger knife if you do not need it, but you will buy a bigger/faster car because of you could show off and just one day by "accident" kill few people also.