BY JUDY LIN-EFTEKHAR
UCLA Today Staff

Managers of UCLA’s campus shuttle services wanted a high-tech tool to more efficiently monitor their bus routes. A computer science professor and his graduate students wanted hard data from embedded computers to advance their research.

Working hand in hand, everybody’s getting what they want, thanks to an experiment that is improving service to passengers as well.

Sherry Lewis, general manager of Fleet & Transit Services, and Rod Jones, manager of transit operations, previously depended on radio reports from drivers and roving supervisors to track the fleet’s 17 buses. Now they can turn to Realtime Bus Tracking, an online computer system that shows the location of every vehicle superimposed on an aerial map of campus.

“This presents a snapshot of exactly what’s happening,” said Lewis. “We have easy identification of where the buses are and how evenly spaced they are. We can then make adjustments as necessary.”

The new tracking system, which works via a compact computer and a Global Positioning System (GPS) unit on each bus, is the creation of graduate students of Computer Science Professor Richard Muntz. They approached Lewis and Jones about the project two years ago — around the same time the transit managers were looking into commercially available GPS systems, typically designed for large municipal bus lines.

“When these companies asked how many buses we have and we said 17,” Lewis recalled, “they told us they couldn’t build something on that small a scale.”

Muntz’s team, however, could. Graduate students Scott Friedman and Ted Kremenek spent six months modifying generic GPS units and computers, “ruggedizing” them to withstand continual vibration and mounting them behind a light panel on each bus. The hockey puck-like GPS antenna rides atop each bus over the front windshield.

The system is not without its problems, which is just as Muntz and his team expected. “Real-world devices are much more complicated than in the lab,” noted Mitchell Tsai, a computer science staff member.

The biggest hurdle is the AT&T wireless network that transmits the signals but has numerous “dead zones” across campus. Consequently, buses sometimes fall off the tracking system — sending the transit managers back to radio tracking. Also, GPS readings aren’t 100% accurate, depending as they do on clear signals from satellites, signals too easily disrupted by buildings and trees.

Still, Muntz’s team is enjoying the opportunity to analyze the data — some 357,000 GPS readings Mondays through Fridays. Among their interests are the causes of delays along the route and effects of special events on campus. Ultimately, said Muntz, the lessons they learn will further their goal of developing computer software and hardware for a wide range of transportation systems far beyond the campus.

Plans are under way to connect the onboard computers with maintenance sensors already on the buses to track everything from engine performance to air conditioning. “If there’s something mechanically wrong,” said Jones, “we’ll be able to identify it before we have an actual failure.”

Under consideration is an addition that would serve passengers more directly: an LCD screen at every stop along the route to indicate when the next bus is due.

Said Lewis, “People need to know, ‘Did I just miss a bus or is a bus coming? Should I wait, or should I start walking?’ ”