IoT devices are the Next Stop for Intelligent Bus Fleet Management and Inspection

Introduction

The contractors offering public/private bus services are responsible for getting passengers to their destinations safely and smoothly. For the bus service operators, they are also responsible for inspecting their vehicles before each journey to ensure the safety of the passengers on board as
well as the pedestrians and other drivers on the road. Such inspection would be a time-consuming and labor-intensive work, especially for a larger scale bus operator, handling dozens or even hundreds of buses. With the our vehicle terminal installed, automatic collection of critical data and control thru various digital input/output interface can greatly ease the burden of manual inspection and monitoring, and also enhances the bus safety in a more technology-wise way.

Project Requirements

Regular pre-trip inspections are a major part of the safety and maintenance regime for any vehicle, especially for commercial buses. After all, timely detection of any possible defect or abnormality can allow corrective measures to be taken or faulty parts to be replaced in time or in advance so as to ensure the vehicles are safe to operate. Currently, such inspection work is mostly done manually, and thus this is not only costly in terms of time and labor, but also susceptible to human errors and negligence in data collection and record-keeping.

Midas Touch’s Solution

The Midas Touch’s vehicle terminal allows the bus service operators to automate their pre-trip safety inspections thru the built-in CAN bus interface. All that is required, with the system being set up, is simply for the bus drivers to tap the our vehicle terminal touchscreen to start running the pre-trip safety check programs either developed by the bus service operators or other third-party solution providers. Once the diagnostics is completed, the our vehicle terminal can transmit the collected data over 4G LTE networks to the control centers where the information is instantly recorded in the servers without requiring any manual data entry.

The Midas Touch vehicle terminal can also enable remote management of the entire fleet over 4G LTE networks. With the built-in GPS, the bus service operators can locate and track the location and routing of any vehicle in real time. And the vehicle terminal supports onboard monitoring as it can alert both the drivers and the control centers of any abnormalities. Useful statistics such as driving speed, fuel economy, driving patterns and routing, etc., can also be generated to evaluate the performance of drivers and vehicles so as to improve operational safety and efficiency. What’s more, the vehicle terminal supports the speaker out and MIC in function simply thru a USB audio adapter that can allow the drivers to use loud speaker for broadcasting in a noisy situation. The vehicle terminal also features an automatic power on function whenever it is connected to power so that the drivers have no need to turn on power each time they start the buses.

Conclusion

With typical buses weighing thousands of pounds and carrying up to dozens of passengers, the vehicle terminal makes the buses safer, more reliable, and much easier to maintain and operate. Moreover, the advantage of installing the intelligent bus system is multiplied by the number of vehicles in a fleet, making it a more attractive investment.