Transit Vehicle Geolocation via Crowd-Sourced Device Interactions
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Solution Overview
Problem
Public transit vehicles often lack reliable geolocation and communication systems, leading to compromised location reporting and increased operational costs due to equipment failures and signal quality issues.
Innovation Solution
The technology employs crowd-sourced geolocation and reporting by utilizing geolocation-enabled user devices interacting with transit terminals, distributing the geolocation and reporting tasks across multiple user devices to reduce equipment requirements and enhance reliability.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If geolocation systems and communication systems are installed in each passenger transit vehicle, then location reporting capability is improved, but capital expenses and operating expenses increase
Solution Approach 1:
The system enables passenger mobile devices to automatically perform geolocation and reporting functions without requiring dedicated equipment in the vehicle. The passengers' devices serve themselves to locate and report the vehicle's position, eliminating the need for complex installed systems while maintaining reliability
Solution Approach 2:
The transit terminal device performs multiple functions including geolocation, communication, and data processing. By consolidating these functions into a universal terminal device rather than separate specialized equipment, the system reduces overall device complexity while maintaining comprehensive location reporting capability
2Measurement precision
If geolocation systems are installed in passenger transit vehicles, then location accuracy is improved, but equipment failure risk and signal quality issues increase
Solution Approach 1:
The system leverages the local geolocation capabilities of multiple passenger devices independently. Each device uses its own GPS and sensor data to determine location, creating multiple independent measurement sources that are less susceptible to single-point failures and signal quality issues
Solution Approach 2:
The system collects geolocation data from multiple passenger devices and processes this feedback information to determine the vehicle's location. This multi-source feedback mechanism provides redundancy and improves reliability by not depending on a single geolocation system that could fail
3Reliability
If dedicated geolocation equipment is installed in transit vehicles, then location reporting is improved, but operational costs increase
Solution Approach 1:
Passenger mobile devices perform geolocation and reporting functions using their own processors and power sources. The transit system leverages these self-service capabilities of passenger devices rather than operating dedicated vehicle-mounted equipment, significantly reducing operational expenses while maintaining location reporting reliability
Solution Approach 2:
Instead of installing expensive dedicated geolocation equipment in each vehicle, the system uses copies of geolocation functionality that already exist in passengers' mobile devices. This copying approach eliminates the need for duplicate equipment installation and reduces operational costs
Data Source
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AI summary
Locating passenger transit vehicles by detecting interactions. Each interaction is between a transit terminal and a geolocation-enabled user device, and is characterized by data indicative of the interacting terminal, the interacting user device, and the time of interaction. For each detected interaction, a geolocation of the corresponding user device at the time of the interaction is requested; and in response to the requesting, the geolocation of the corresponding user device, the time of the geolocation, and the data indicative of the interacting terminal is received. A particular passenger transit vehicle associated with at least one interacting terminal is identified based on the user device geolocations. The location of the passenger transit vehicle is transmitted for display on user devices.