A Bus Tracking Information System using Consumer Grade GPS: A Case Study

Abstract

A real-time tracking of public bus movement may help passengers plan their travel and reduce stress due to uncertainty. Several bus tracking information systems have been proposed, but costly to implement and also take longer time to setup. In this paper, a bus tracking information system using standard mobile Internet connection and consumer grade GPS is proposed, called UBAIS (University Bus Arrival Information System). The system will continuously update the estimated arrival time based on the actual location of the buses in the route leading to the next bus stop. With graphical information provided to the passenger via a mobile phone, passengers will be able to view the actual location of the buses in the route. A prototype for Universiti Tun Hussein Onn Malaysia’s bus service has been implemented – consisting of buses equipped with Android devices that will continuously send current GPS locations of the buses to a centralized server and read by clients (fixed or mobile) with various update intervals. Several testing has been performed on the current prototype and it demonstrates good accuracy and increased satisfaction among passengers