U.S. Twin Cities Adopt RFID to Improve Location and Management of Bus Depots
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Metro Transit in Minneapolis and St. Paul in the United States provides public transportation services for the area around the Twin Cities in Minnesota (a total of 7 counties), and now its 5 bus terminals use the Ubisense real-time positioning system.
Before installing Ubisense based on an ultra-wideband active RFID system, Metro Transit adopted an automatic vehicle location system (AVL) that used GPS technology to identify cars leaving the terminal and driving along 118 bus routes. Metro Transit uses the AVL system to monitor the location of vehicles in real time, tracking whether they follow their respective bus route arrangements.
Although the AVL system allows dispatchers to know the location of the vehicle on their respective routes, when the vehicle is parked in 5 indoor garages in the city, AVL cannot identify the location of the vehicle, said Robert Gibbons, Metro Transit customer service director.
“The garage is a missing link in the vehicle tracking chain,” said Gary Nyberg, Metro Transit’s bus operations technical system manager. In order for dispatchers to understand the location of the vehicle and assign a suitable vehicle to the driving route, they have to go to the garage to check and record. “The dispatcher had to take the time to personally check the vehicles in order to decide which vehicle to assign to which route when,” Nyberg said.
In order to simplify this process, Metro Transit began to look for a wireless solution, and in 2008 opened a tender, and finally chose Ubisense. This system is Ubisense’s first bus garage management application, and may also be the first such garage bus tracking solution in North America, said Russ Chandler, Ubisense North America CEO.
At present, this system has been implemented about 95%. Nyberg said that with a small number of readers now installed in some remote areas of some garages, the system is expected to be fully adopted by the end of this year. Metro Transit has a total of more than 900 buses. At present, an active UWB tag is installed on the roof of each car. The tag sends its unique ID code at a rate of 4 times per second. When the built-in motion sensor of the tag detects that the bus is stationary, the tag enters the dormant state and stops sending 6-8.5 GHz signals, thereby prolonging the life of the internal battery of the tag.
Install 60 Ubisense readers in each garage
The average garage area is 400,000 square feet
Ubisense has installed multiple RFID readers in the garage, so that multiple sub-devices can receive tag signals, and send the information to a central master node through the cable Ethernet connection, which then determines the strength and signal strength of multiple readers Receive the angle and calculate the position of each label. The system sends these data to the Metro Transit server via another cable connection, where Ubisense software receives and compiles the reader information to display the location of each bus on a map. The average area of the garage is 400,000 square feet, and each garage is equipped with 60 readers.
Install Ubisense active tags on the roof of each car
This system can accurately locate the vehicle within 5 feet by analyzing the signals received by at least two readers. The main reader is equipped with a microcomputer to complete the original calculations, and then send the data to the server. The server Ubisense software calculates the lane and location where the bus is parked. The software also corresponds the ID code to the vehicle information, such as size, engine type, maintenance history and other information.
With this system, Metro Transit dispatchers do not need to leave the office in the morning to find vehicles; mechanics can use this system to quickly locate vehicles in need of repair; staff can quickly find vehicles whose passengers have lost items. In addition, this system allows Metro Transit to know when the vehicle leaves and returns to the garage, and confirms the correctness of the time reported by the driver.
On a computer screen, a floor plan displayed by Ubisense software shows the location and status of the vehicle. The blue button indicates that the vehicle belongs to another garage, and the gray button indicates that the vehicle has been assigned to a route. The wrench button indicates the vehicle’s requirements or current status. Receiving repairs. If the user moves the mouse to a button, the system displays detailed information about the car, such as size and characteristics.
Ubisense’s biggest challenge is to ensure that the reader installed on the ceiling can read the tag signal. In the case of low ceiling heights, pillars or buses may hinder signal transmission, so Ubisense strategically installed readers to solve this problem.
Metro Transit also integrated the AVL system into the Ubisense software, so that dispatchers only need to log in to the Ubisense system to view vehicles parked in outdoor or indoor garages.
So far, Metro Transit is very satisfied with this system and believes that it greatly improves operational efficiency.
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