GPS Drive Path Analysis for Waste Service Vehicle Route Optimization
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Solution Overview
Problem
Current methods for detecting customer and container locations for waste and recycling operations are expensive, burdensome, and lack a reliable means of data collection, integration, and analysis to determine service duration and location.
Innovation Solution
A system and method using GPS drive path analysis to identify customer and container locations by collecting location data from waste or recycling service vehicles, associating it with street network and parcel data, and designating stop points based on consecutive GPS pings and low vehicle speed.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Difficulty of detecting and measuring
If manual logging or equipment modifications (cameras, sensors) are used to detect customer and container locations, then service detection capability is improved, but implementation cost and operational burden increase significantly
Solution Approach 1:
The system uses the service vehicle's existing GPS telemetry system to automatically detect and report customer and container locations without requiring manual logging by drivers or additional detection equipment. The vehicle itself serves as the detection device by leveraging its built-in navigation capabilities.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent replaces mechanical/electronic detection systems (cameras, RFID sensors, manual logging) with a data processing system that analyzes existing GPS telemetry data. Instead of adding physical detection equipment, the solution uses computational analysis of location-time data to infer service events.
2Measurement precision
If GPS telemetry data is collected at frequent intervals to accurately determine service duration and location, then measurement precision is improved, but data processing complexity and energy consumption increase
Solution Approach 1:
The system pre-processes GPS telemetry data by establishing service windows (time and location boundaries) before analyzing whether service events occurred within those windows. This preliminary structuring of data reduces the complexity of subsequent analysis by organizing raw GPS pings into meaningful service event candidates.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent collects GPS data at frequent intervals (excessive action) to ensure no service event is missed, then uses filtering algorithms to identify only the relevant portions for service detection. This approach prioritizes comprehensive data collection over optimized sampling, accepting the processing burden to ensure measurement precision.
Data Source
AI summary
A system and method for vehicle drive path analysis for a waste/recycling service vehicle are provided. The system and method can enable identifying of the customers and/or container locations for waste and recycling collection routes using vehicle drive path analysis and parcel data analysis. Some non-limiting properties that can be derived from the analysis include the customer location, address of customers, and/or the locations of containers at the customer location.