Miami Metro GPS Team

C. Miller, K. Pickering, B. Samic, J. Morton, M.M. Miller

Abstract:	The goal of the Miami Metro GPS Tracker project is to provide the students of Miami University with up to the second position information about all the transportation busses on and off campus. The project encompasses both hardware and software design aspects, and seeks to produce a solution custom to Miami University’s mass transit system, that quickly and conveniently disseminates GPS position information to allow students to catch the bus with a minimum of time spent waiting at stops. The project also strives for efficiency, using a bare minimum of hardware and expenses both to track the busses and convey the information to students. On each bus, a GPS receiver will be installed and collect position information. The GPS data will be transmitted via spread spectrum radio modem back to a base station computer in a central location on campus. The base station is a computer running in the Miami Engineering building, with a radio transceiver to receive the position information from all the busses. The computer will collect all the bus position information and calculate estimated times of arrival of the busses for all the stops along their route. These will be transferred using FTP and stored along with the positions in a database on a web server. Using XML, the position information will be displayed on a webpage using the Google Maps API to dynamically project all the bus positions on a movable, zoomable map of Oxford, Ohio. Clicking on a labeled bus stop will display the estimated time of arrival (ETA) for each route. In addition, this webpage can be made accessible by many web capable cell phones, so students will be able to check the bus status without being next to a computer. Using cell phones and the internet saves the university from having to invest in any infrastructure in the form of screens or kiosks to display where the busses are located.
Published in:	Proceedings of the 19th International Technical Meeting of the Satellite Division of The Institute of Navigation (ION GNSS 2006) September 26 - 29, 2006 Fort Worth Convention Center Fort Worth, TX
Pages:	3089 - 3093
Cite this article:	Miller, C., Pickering, K., Samic, B., Morton, J., Miller, M.M., "Miami Metro GPS Team," Proceedings of the 19th International Technical Meeting of the Satellite Division of The Institute of Navigation (ION GNSS 2006), Fort Worth, TX, September 2006, pp. 3089-3093.
Full Paper:	ION Members/Non-Members: 1 Download Credit Sign In