Public bus transit systems are essential services to the sustainability and equity of any
country. However poor bus service reliability is often reported to be a major reason for
travellers choosing to travel by car instead of by bus. This not only directly impacts on the
financial and operational viability of bus companies, but also indirectly leads to higher
levels of traffic congestion, energy use, carbon emissions and air pollutants across the
transport network. This project (named Bus CONTROLS) aims at providing solutions for
the unreliability of bus services by making use of Internet of Things (IoT) based
approaches, through low-cost state-of-art sensors, actuators, microcontrollers, cameras,
cloud storage and an online HPC server. Bus CONTROLS will provide a low-cost solution
for Bus tracking, Passenger Information System, as well as Bus Travel Time Estimation.
Once the technical feasibility and cost-effectiveness of this project have been
demonstrated through the “proof of concept” prototype, there exists substantial scope for
commercialisation of the product as a complete customised turnkey solution, consisting of
the hardware, software and online HPC server. Besides bus companies and travellers will
benefit significantly from the system as they will save on waiting time and may better plan
their journeys.