University of Washington transportation engineers have
created a new system that senses and collects data from bus riders’ mobile
devices using Wi-Fi and Bluetooth signals. This system is created to “ensure
that buses are meeting the greatest needs in a community”(Science Daily), and is a very
inexpensive method to implement. At a cost of only $60 dollars per bus sensor,
this system can be used to estimate travel times or even dictate how many buses
are needed for certain events based on the volume of people that the sensor
senses.
I think it
is important to note that these buses’ sensors originally picked up over 20,000
Wi-Fi and Bluetooth addresses from mobile devices. This means that lots of
people are connected to the network, making it hard for the bus to know who exactly
is using their transportation and then giving them inaccurate information. This
is because they haven’t yet figured out how to keep the Wi-Fi and Bluetooth
services to pick up only bus riders’ addresses. Another important thing to note
is that since these MAC (Media Access Control) addresses are detected from Wi-Fi
and Bluetooth, privacy could be jeopardized—however, not to worry, because when
detected, researchers have been able to make anonymous these addresses for
privacy protection. A third thing I would like to comment on is that transit
agencies are always looking for information to give decisions on—whether or not
to add buses, change routes, what time buses are most popular, etc. This MAC
sensor system would provide the agencies with this exact information at such a
little cost.
There were
a few things that I believe were overlooked in this article. For starters, if
data relying on Wi-Fi and Bluetooth is their only form of information intake,
the elderly and low-income populations might be left out due to the lack of
technology. This was mentioned but I believe it should have been more of a
concern considering that that accounts for a huge portion of the bus
population. Secondly, I think it was overlooked that people such as bicyclists
and pedestrians whose data could be picked up by the sensors and would also
provide inaccurate information for the bus agencies. And thirdly, this data
could only be extracted if each user has their Wi-Fi and Bluetooth on, thus,
becoming not as exact and not accounting for all bus riders.
Links:
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/01/160120142720.htm
http://www.bostoncommons.net/using-smartphone-bluetooth-wi-fi-sensing-to-improve-bus-services/
Hi Bailey,
ReplyDeleteI think this was a very interesting article because I think it is very relatable. I think it is very smart and clever for the busses to have sensors to track the amount of people that are looking to take the bus and then be able to send the appropriate amount of busses to that area. This not only saves people time because now they can rely on busses coming but it also saves bus companies a lot of money because now they don’t have to worry about sending busses to places where no one needs to be picked up. This is also great for events like you said in the blog because now bus companies know how many busses are needed to satisfy the number of people needing to take the bus to get to the event they are going to. In a society full of new and growing technology, sensors are very important because people are on their phones all of the time. It makes it easy and efficient for them to check when the bus is coming without having to leave their phone. I do agree with the flaws that the sensors pick up signals from everyone whether you are taking the bus or not. This gives false information and can be burdensome and annoying to both the bus drivers and the passengers. If they can figure out a way to specify which people are looking for a bus and which people are just walking around in the streets, the system would be a very efficient and helpful source when looking for transportation.