Tuesday, April 13, 2010

Real-time location of Jena’s buses and trams with Ubisense RTLS

Cambridge, UK and Dortmund, Germany 11 March 2010. Ubisense announces the successful completion of the installation of their real-time location system (RTLS); in conjunction with their partner Verkehrsautomatisierung Berlin (VAB); at two depots for JNVG mbH (Jena Transit Authority).

The Ubisense solution enables efficient management of Jena’s fleet of buses and trams. The Ubisense solution is currently monitoring eighty vehicles belonging to JNVG mbH. Location tracking for an additional 30 vehicles, which are owned by another organisation, and housed at the JNVG mbH depot will be added in the near future.

At the Burgau depot, the system is installed over an area of more than 40 000 m2, comprising the outdoor yard area, where the buses are parked, and the indoor halls, housing trams, buses and workshop areas. The Ubisense RTLS has also been expanded to provide coverage for the outside parking area, in a large, open space area at the North depot.

The Ubisense solution consists of a number of sensors, which are continuously providing real-time location positions, accurate to 1 metre or less. This positioning allows vehicles to be assigned to a particular track or parking place. The RTLS also supplies information for the VAB depot management system, providing alerts when vehicles arrive or leave the depot. The information supplied by the Ubisense RTLS, allows informed decision making, and efficient process optimisation.

Each vehicle is equipped with a radio module (known as an Ubisense Tag) which transmits ultra-wideband signals. Ubisense sensors are located at various positions around the depot and monitor the signals emitted from the Ubisense Tags. From this they determine the exact location of the vehicles. The location information is provided and used in real-time, enabling the exact position of vehicles to be displayed, and ensuring the efficient management of routine processes such as maintenance and cleaning. The combined VAB and Ubisense RTLS solution has enabled efficiency to be significantly increased.

Mr Hamann, project manager at Jena comments “The solution installed by VAB and Ubisense provides a completely new type of transparency 24 hours per day, providing us with new opportunities for process optimisation.”