A Smart Information System for Public Transportation Using IoT- (UOG0623028)

Public transportation systems in many countries face many challenges such as lack of real time information of arrival-departure time and buses breakdown, long waiting time, overcrowding etc. Due to the these problems passengers suffer lot.The main reason why people choose public transportation over private vehicle is their environment-friendly and cost effectiveness. If they had own vehicles the might have to spend more money to maintain it. Because of these circumstance most significant number of people tend to use public transportation over private vehicles. Since maximum amount using public transportation in order to provide quality service to passenger this research proposed smart bus information system using IoT technology which user acknowledged by real time bus location and seat availability.

This system demonstrate automation system for detect the bus current location, mapping, arrival departure time prediction and crowd level inside the bus. They developed system to provide information for both parties which mean passengers inside the bus and outside. This system designed using  Arduino microcontroller, IR sensors, GPS Module and SIM Module. A LCD screen used to display bus current stop, next stop, approximate time to reach next stop to the inside passengers while outside passengers get information by web based interface. Two IR sensors are fixed at both path entry and exit path to count the number of passengers. The location details are received through GPS module through embedded system. GPS module track the location to the controller, through that web interface will be update with current location. Through this system passengers get informed to whether its worth to wait for their bus in the stop or otherwise they use alternative route to reach their destination avoiding wasting their time.

This research provide great solution to a real world problem , they demonstrate that IoT based system can be more reliable to this problem which can solve number of discrepancies related to public transportation.This system inform both passenger outside and even the inside. It shows some promising result that they tested their system in fixed route on about five stops. It shows how IoT can used to improve the effectiveness of transportation in order to improve the customer comfort.

However this chosen method have their own limitations. It limited to only few routes and they experimented into small area and using IR sensors to count passengers won't might get accurate number since in public buses they have two entrance and exist so passengers might not use to different entrance and exist then the IR sensor might get confused to count. It used web interface to acknowledge the outside it would be better to use a mobile app rather than web interface because it's user friendly and cost- effective compare to website. And for the counting the passengers, it would be a great solution to offer that responsibility to conductor or driver, manual assist would be a great solution then can arrange the seats available through the mobile app since IR sensor might miscount the passenger but human's count would be more accurate and it would be great idea specially for developing countries because in their conductors are the one who manage them. On the other hand mobile app would be cost-effective compare to cost of IoT devices maintenance, it could be dirty and early corruption due to the vibrations.

Despite the technical limitations, this proposed solution would be beneficial to provide accurate information to the passenger since they use considerable amount of devices to track most of the tasks and provide those into both passengers in order reduce their awaiting time on bus stops.

In this paper a smart information system is presented for the bus passengers that have the ability to interconnect passengers with real-world public bus. This system based on several IoT devices consists IR sensors, GPS module and Arduino UNO. Since the users provided with real time information about the vacant seats, the passengers will be able to take better decisions in terms which bus should take. However giving to the present technology it would be great using mobile app rather than using webpage. It might be cost-effective and maintenance fee will be reduced. And the conductor-assisted seat counting also would be more accurate compare to the limitations in IoT devices.

Lavanya Raju, Binu Dennison, Sheela Sobana Rani K,Gayathri R
International Journal of recent trends in Engineering & Research(April - 2017)

Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering, Sri Ramakrishna Institute of Technology