GPS Based Electronic

“Tapella” System

By:

Selamawit Reta

Yared Dejene

Yonas Tesfaye

June, 2013Advisor: Getachew Teshome

1

Outline

Problem Statement

Project Objective

System Architecture

I. Vehicle Side Unit

II. Station Side Unit

Test Setup

Discussion and Conclusion

Challenges

2

Problem Statement

Addis Ababa’s population has been found to be around 7million and counting, only 3 out of 1000 individuals have apersonal car.

But use of taxi has been proven difficult in many levels

Taxis refusing to travel long distances

Refusing to work at anytime of the day

Usage of prohibited roads (shortcuts)

3

Proposed solution by the government

Zoning System

“Tor-Hailoch”24, SW

“Asko”

42 , W

“Megenagna”

38, NE

“Bole”31, E

“Saris” 31, SE

4

Problems of the existing system

Not enough control provided by the transport officers.

Invisibility of the display material at night

Usage of prohibited roads

5

Project Objective

To fully design and implement an electronic

control system which is GPS based for taxis.

6

System Architecture 7

I. Vehicle Side Unit8

The “Tapella” – Display unit

• Used to indicate status (out of bound)

• For cost minimization (sponsors)

9

Path Checking MethodsMethods to check whether a given vehicle is in or out of

bound.

Four possible approaches

Straight line approach

Circle-line intersection approach

Higher degree interpolation

Point-line perpendicular distance approach

Advantages

Tolerance variation

Easy and accurate

10

Point-Line Perpendicular Distance Approach11

12

Start

Read GPS Data

Valid GPS Data?

Checksum Correct?

Yes

Extract latitude and longitude

Find the nearest segment of the road(b/n Check point)

Got new nearest segment of the

road?

Change of line segment

Yes

Calculate the perpendicular distance between GPS data

and line

No

Perpendicular distance is less than

toleranceVehicle is out of BoundNoYes

No

No

Yes

II. Station Side Unit

• An application software resides at the station.

• Provides a controlling means of vehicles at different location.

• Interfaced with GSM phone(Sony Ericsson C902)

• Listens violation messages from vehicle side units through the attached phone.

• Mainly consists map(Bing),data grid, and tabbed interfaces

• Written in C# WPF Application

13

Notification to the station operator

Parsing violation message and save into database

Auto reply to the nearest traffic police officer.

New path assignment

New vehicle registration

New device registration

Assign traffic police officers

View database records

Printing and export to MS Excel of the content of the data grid.

Listening violation messages

14Software Features

Data Model15

Test Setups

Test Circuit

16

Test scenarios When the system is at working hour

When the system is on the right path

When the system is out of path

When the system is not at working hour

17Test Path

17

7 Checkpoints

6 kilo university

through

AAIT (basketball

court area)

to

4 kilo university”.

Tolerance = 20m

When the Vehicle is in the right path

Around 5 kilo library

No SMS message was sent from the vehicle

Inbound indicator LED is

ON

18

19 meters < 20 meters

When the Vehicle is out of the path

Around AAiT dormitory

gate

Perpendicular distance

greater than Tolerance

violation SMS sent

to the central station

19

32 Meters > 20 Meters

Violation on Station Side Software

On receiving SMS

Notifies the operator that a violation SMS has been

received.

Extract information included in the SMS message and

saves into the database.(PlateNo,latitude,longitude,violationtime,violationdate,zone,..)

The GPS coordinates where the violation occurred will

be pin pointed on the map.

20

Violation Saved in the Database

21

GPS point where the violation occurred

When the system is NOT at working hour

Working hour(7:00AM-9:00PM)

Saves Power

22

Discussion and Conclusion

Significant in areas where citizens have been suffering from shortage of

taxis.

Enforces all taxis to work strictly at all times at the assigned paths.

Decreases the problems caused by taxis refusing to load customers

going long distances or dividing long routes in to smaller routes.

Everyone participating in the industry benefit from our system.

the owners of the taxi ( always in service = brings cash)

the drivers (payment related to violation)

the user of the taxi (Not going to having hard time accessing any taxis ) and

the transport authority (less controlling mechanism)

23

Challenges

Memory problem small sized RAM provided by the MCU (Arduino).

Variation of GPS data.

24

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Thank You!