Energy-Efficient Framework for Indoor and Outdoor Tracking of Public Transit Passengers Using Bluetooth-Enabled Devices
Boaz Ben Moshe, Yuval Hadas, Harel Levi · Transportation Research Board 93rd Annual MeetingTransportation Research Board · 2014
The quality and availability of a data collection system are essential for a high-quality planning and operations phases of Public transit (PT) systems. Passengers' demand (both spatial and temporal) is a key component in those phases. Unfortunately, acquiring passenger demand is a complex and time-consuming process. Various information technologies are used by PT operators to assist in the planning and operations phases. The main systems being used are Automatic Vehicle Location systems, Automatic Passenger counting systems, and Automatic Fare Collection systems. Those systems are not capable of completely tracking passengers' movements throughout the system. Hence accurate demand estimation is not possible. Global Navigation Satellite System technology can overcome the disadvantages of those systems. The main drawbacks of such an approach are the high-energy consumption and lack of indoor use. A novel approach for tracking passengers is introduced, which has the advantages of being both energy-efficient and accurate (indoor and outdoor). Such an approach can provide the necessary means to overcome the above-mentioned issues with current technologies. In this paper, the authors successfully demonstrate the capabilities of Bluetooth Low Energy for tracking passengers outdoor and indoor. Combined with the proposed algorithms, it is possible to accurately track passengers and model and estimate demand.