The Internet of Things

What is really meant by the term the Internet of Things, or IoT as it is often abbreviated?

It has long been heralded as the next stage in transport development, but how IoT technology will work in practice is often more uncertain.

As a concept first, the Internet of Things describes a scenario where every sensor and device has local intelligence, and is accessible using standard Internet protocols. There are three technology developments driving IoT: the development of new mobile communications technologies such as 5G that allow devices to be permanently connected, the development of low-power, low-cost yet incredibly powerful microprocessors and the development of standard Internet protocols to allow such devices to communicate in non-proprietary ways.

The notion of IoT technology playing a central role in the transport industry is not a new idea. The desire to access accurate, real-time data from across a transport network, to process it efficiently, and then translate it into tangible actions, has been central to modern transport networks for some time. This is, of course, the process behind real-time bus information, designed to ensure waiting customers know when their bus will arrive.

However, to date, many technologies, both onbus and at the roadside, have been proprietary in nature and have not built upon common Internet standards.

This has limited overall IoT progress, as projects often become complex and costly – particularly in scenarios where information originates from sensors in different domains, such as traffic light priority and environmental sensing at roadside.

However, things are changing, particularly in the bus sector, where there is increasing drive towards open standards. We are moving into an era of IoT-powered public transport: one which will deliver enormous benefits in terms of efficiency, environmental footprint and passenger experience.

Better bus scheduling

Let’s focus on the bus networks in metropolitan areas. In recent years we have seen increasing migration to towns and cities, especially to the centres of such urban areas, as opposed to the suburbs.

While Covid-19 has, at least temporarily, cast a degree of uncertainty over this trend, there is little doubt that demand for highly efficient bus networks, responsive to passengers’ working and leisure patterns, will increase. Likewise, the requirement for environmentally efficient bus services, minimising carbon footprint and air pollution, has never been greater.

IoT technology has been present across most established bus networks for a number of years. The majority of passengers have used buses that provide current and next stop information, or have waited at stops with digital signs offering live arrival information.

These real-time systems were originally designed using proprietary protocols. For example, an on-bus GPS tracker would use a dedicated radio channel to communicate – via a supplierproprietary protocol – with the bus stop in order to update the bus stop display on arrival and departure.

This technology was replaced around seven years ago with a system that saw the buses transmit information to a back-office system, which then relayed messages to the next bus stop. The net result was the same – dynamic alerts at each stop regarding bus arrival times – but it removed the need for buses to be fitted with dedicated and expensive radio hardware specific to the particular site. It also removed the requirement to fit every sign with a specialist radio receiver, making it possible to exploit far cheaper mobile network technology.

Tomorrow’s IoT-powered bus networks will benefit from these micro sensors being both far cheaper (perhaps £10 per bus, rather than £1,000!), and also compatible with open standards – so all bus stops, buses and even traffic lights will communicate in the same language. Such standards will no longer specify bits and bytes; instead, they will focus purely on content by building on industry-standard protocols such as IP, HTTP, JSON, XML and RESTful.

Even more excitingly, a new family of Internet standards have emerged over the last few years that enable a device to query the capabilities of another, and then adapt how it interacts based on the remote device’s capabilities. GraphQL is an example of such a technology.

These cheaper yet more sophisticated micro sensors will be able to capture information such as ridership numbers and wait times or the condition of on-board equipment making it far easier for operators to plan and manage routes – something that is particularly challenging today.

Dynamic schedule management capabilities will improve, with operators better able to re-route buses around incidents and plan routes and timetables in-line with fluctuating demand. And when buses are cancelled, the affected individual journeys will be identified so that passengers can be proactively presented with alternative options.

In other words, a combination of cheaper hardware and interoperable, open source
software will result in smarter, more efficient and more passenger-centric bus scheduling.