RFID system to monitor buses, taxis

In the near future, mobile-phone users will able to track public buses on their phones, and will not need to spend time waiting at bus stops.

 This follows the development of a Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) Sensor Network, originally aimed at managing bus and truck fleets more efficiently and cutting down on fuel burned by vehicles stuck in traffic.

The project, which involves Burapha University's Logistics Faculty and Southeast Asia Technology (Seatec), will also help commuters by making bus and taxi travel in Bangkok more convenient.

The assistant professor of Burapha's Logistics Faculty, Nakorn Indra-Payoong, is in charge of the project's research and development, which has been under way for several years.

He said the project involved RFID readers called "B- bases", RFID tags called "B- moves", software applications and a control or computer centre.

The readers, or B-bases, will be embedded in telephone booths located along bus or truck routes, while the tags, or B-moves, will be embedded on the vehicles. When a tagged vehicle moves through a certain area, its tag will send information identifying the bus and its driver, as well as its speed, to the phone-booth readers.

The information from all buses will be transferred in real time to a control centre, where computers and software applications will calculate and analyse it into a real-time traffic status, ready for use by a variety of organisations and individuals, including the Bangkok Mass Transit Authority (BMTA), commuters, the Bangkok Metropolitan Administration (BMA) and traffic police.

Both push and pull approaches will be able to use analyses based on the information from the system, depending on the business models and requirements of participants.

It is envisaged that the system will be used by private fleet owners as well as Bangkok's public transport vehicles. It will enable fleet owners to remotely check on real-time traffic and fleet status. It will assist efficient fleet management by helping to reduce time wasted by vehicles stuck in traffic and reduce fuel bills.

An information alert service will be provided for mobile phone operators that will make the use of buses and taxis more convenient for commuters.

Nakorn said the B-bases - attached to phone booths - will operate at a low- frequency 433 megahertz, and will be able to read the B-moves on passing vehicles at speeds up to 120 kilometres per hour, and at distances up to 300 metres. 

"The project will enable taxi companies, public transportation and logistics businesses to monitor their vehicle fleets in real time from a computer centre. They will also able to alert drivers if they exceed speed limits preset by the companies," Nakorn said.

For taxis and public transport organisations, the computer centre will inform mobile-phone users of real-time traffic information, effectively telling them how far away their bus or taxi is and how long it will take to arrive. They will therefore be able to avoid wasting time at bus stops.

Seatec's vice president Salin Pinkayan said his company and Burapha University would have a pilot project operating within the first half of this year.

In the pilot, between 50 and 100 B-bases will be attached to public telephone booths to monitor vehicles or buses equipped with B-move tags. Information will be sent in real time to a computer centre so staff and administrators can monitor traffic flows.

He said Seatec would install the RFID sensor network and the system's IT platform. After the pilot, there will be 500 B-Bases installed in Bangkok within two years. Two hundred B-bases will be installed in the first year and 300 in the second year.

The firm is also planning its next step - installing B-bases around the country.

"We want to be a solution provider, providing traffic information to public organisations, businesses and logistics companies who want to manage their businesses more efficiently, increase their capacity and improve productivity," Salin said.

Initially, there are about 18,100 vehicles in the project's target group, including, for example, 5,000 trucks in the Port Authority of Thailand's fleet, 5,000 NGV buses belonging to the BMTA, 200 public buses in the airport fleet, 3,000 buses of The Transport Company, 1,000 NGV minibuses and 1,000 NGV private buses. 

"At present, the system is being piloted on 25 BMTA public buses on route 136," he said.

The project was earlier granted Bt1.3 million by the National Innovation Agency, helping to meet total investment of Bt2.2 million.

According to the Land Transportation Department, there were 33,716 public buses and 110,571 trucks using Bangkok's streets in 2007. If they were all trackable by the RFID Sensor Network Project, it would help the overall traffic flow in the city.