Vehicle majors navigate the road less travelled

Global positioning system initiative for bus terminal kicked off

Can you imagine a time when boarding and travel outstation by buses would be as smooth and convenient as air travel?

To provide one such technological expertise at competitive cost, large vehicle manufacturers such as Ashok Leyland, Tata Motors and Mahindra & Mahindra are working together on open standards along with academia.

To this end a pilot project has been undertaken at Koyambedu Bus Terminus in Chennai. Operations at this bus station, touted to be the largest in south Asia, is being streamlined by the telematics expert panel of the core-group on automotive research and development (CAR) with a ground traffic control (GTC) project.

The large vehicle manufacturers are members of the CAR.

S Sadagopan, director, Indian Institute of Information and Technology, Bangalore, and a member of the core-group on CAR, says that when airplanes can be guided to the aerobridges from the time of landing and guided back to their take-off in an orderly manner, why cannot we direct buses in and out of bus stations seamlessly without chaos and confusion.

"The challenge attempted by the Koyambedu project is to replicate the same technology used to guide aeroplanes in and out of airports at affordable cost," he added. The Koyambedu bus terminus is spread over 36.5 acre and has capacity to handle over 2,000 buses and two lakh passengers every day.

Sources from CAR say that the GTC project expects to kick start operations in the next few months.

If this pilot project is successful, it would be replicated throughout India in various outstation bus terminals, they added. The project is funded by the Central government's department of science and technology and the department of heavy industries.

GTC simply avails of to the bus driver digital maps, driving information, facilities information like where service stations, gas stations parking facilities and restaurants are located.

It guides him on stationing his vehicle at the terminus. All of this is done with the help of the global positioning system (GPS) and geographical information systems (GIS).

GTC cuts out the chaos familiar to bus stations currently. It streamlines and diseminates information on bus location, destinations, departure and arrival and other related issues to the passengers, saving them a lot of trouble and confusion.

Sources from CAR say the next step would be to web-enable the GTC information so passengers can access it on the Internet.

Further value additions can be made to the GTC system to streamline and make available all informations on bus schedules, actual departures and arrivals, delays and even the whereabouts of any particular bus.

Vehicle navigation systems can help the driver to plan the route according to traffic conditions. Similarly, vehicle remote diagnostics can aid to assess the condition of the bus.