Travelling that goes smart

Travelling and transportation are posing as a main challenge in the face of  developing India. At one end we have wide classes of vehicles on the road - starting from four seated motor bikes to, small cars, medium cars, luxury cars to busses and trains. Still we experience the scenario of a passenger standing on the foot board of the public transport system. With these setbacks, India has the advantage that it is well connected  by cellular mobile phones. It is the right beginning to think about a integrated app which is a solution for all personal transport requirements. In this context it has become a possibility to use the pooling system of online cabs which is well developed.

The idea here is to provide a one place integrated transport solution, ie the user can get a comfortable hassle free travel from place A to place B. The integrated solution comes in the form of a mobile app. The app requires a social login, for instance Facebook or Gmail or Twitter. On completion of the signing in the user will be enquired about the start point and the destination. The choices present would be a public transport system a pool system or a private owned car. The map shall also come up showing the social friends in nearby locations who are willing to pool. The integrated solution for the public transport is  a door to door service which will be taking the needs of the passenger from the staring point to the final destination. The door service is to be available with help of Autorikshas and taxi cabs.

The integrated transport system is automated to collect the cash in the form of mobile wallet. The public transport system option is flexible as it allows for seat reservations. The possibility of seat reservation is possible by ensuring connectivity between the vehicle and the "transport" server.

The Indian Scenario

The Indian transportation planning is quiet distinct from the ones that are addressed in the West. The major drawback is the lack of viable real estate and infrastructure to cater to the needs of the population. In many a places, the public transport exceeds its "capacity"(if there is one) and literally there is not a piece of land where one can put his/her feet. The incorporation of the integrated app is to benefit the commuters in atleast two folds. Firstly, the commuters  becomes aware that the world is a place where one has to live and let live. Public consciousness is the key attitude shift that can be brought. Since the app can make personalized suggestion on choosing the fastest, cheapest or the greenest routes - she/ he is made to think twice before using her/his own private vehicle.  Second, the system can be used for accurate and real time survey. This means that we can replace the present system where the bus conductors note down the number of passengers who covered  a certain distance,  The data set obtained from the app is a boon for the transport coorporation for the city or the state since the real data is available, while planning for additional routes or on optimizing the trips or even in efficient budgetary allotment. 

A Final Note

The number of people who owns a private car does not tell anything about the development of a country, but what matters is the productivity that is derived by the public transport network. This is the right eye opener for many of the nation planners to invest more on optimizing the available resources rather than to build expressways and fly overs.

Elements in the pedagogy for the future IoT revolution

The internet of things is going to transform the way we perceive the objective world. The world is getting more and more connected with multiple devices available.  This post is a reflection on my recent encounter with the the use cases of the Internet of Things (IoTs) in education and academia There a pressing need for us to invest on the human resources for developing the current IoT. If there is lot of potential in IoT, then the need to train our younger generations is also high.

The IoT mania is more hyped than reality. In reality, we are not trying to do something that is entirely new. But IoT is just another way of getting things done in a smarter, simplified and user friendly manner. The whole jargon blinds us of many things that we can/have fundamentally deal/dealt with. For instance, has anyone thought about the number of multimedia content that gets transferred across the internet and the cloud. Is there that theoretical "infinite" storage that is available to us to store this on the clouds? Here comes the savior in the form of Wavelet and Time-Frequency transforms. A fundamental theory that has developed more than a 50 years back, comes into action in a beautiful coincidence to solve a Big Data issue. Looking at the various layers of the communication stack in the current, IoT can back on a huge legacy network if it gets focused on the specific constraints. The IoT is going to make access to every possible sensed data at any place. In a nutshell, it becomes an all pervasive network.

The key drivers in IoT is surely the ability to handle data. Are we prepared for that ? Some key anticipations in the industry goes in the areas of low power, storage and integration of the hardware software peripherals. The answers to all these are open as of today. The 50 billion or the a trillion devices by 2020 .. how can one possibly give a network address to each of these.

If the technologists claim it to be the next biggest revolution after the industrial revolution in the early 18th century, then we better get ready. - the earlier the better. There are a variety of starter kits for students to pick up early. Specifically, there needs to be training in the following aspects : sensing, networking and actuation. An undergraduate IoT lab facility is strongly required.


Navigate to IoT Lab.