Abstract: Information technology (IT) has transformed many industries, from education to health care to government, and is now in the early stages of transforming transportation systems. The major issue that faces transportation is a high rate of accidents and this is much more in developing countries. The lack of proper infrastructure for roads and indiscipline among drivers is one of major reasons for these crashes. The major indiscipline cases are over speeding and driving outside permitted routes for Matatu Saccos. This project focuses on public service vehicles (PSV) i.e. Matatus, where the goal of the project is to design and deploy a Real-Time embedded system that will be attached to public vehicles to act as a speed limit and route advisory and monitoring tool for drivers. The proposed System will base on the designed model and will play a major role in reducing risks and high accidents rate, whereas it can increase the driver’s ability to adhere to speed limit and routes. This research project explored earlier methods that have been used previously in speed limit adherence. It goes on to synthesize and then reorganized the methods into a conceptual model. This is the model that acknowledges the presence of speed awareness method, route awareness method and a computation method that analyses and gives a deduction of whether the driver is over speeding, violating route or both. The concept identified was then the drive in model design. The model that was designed was to achieve the research objects the main objective being to monitor speed limit adherence and location violations. A prototype based on the model was analyzed and designed then developed. To develop the prototype, enabling technologies from literature review were used to implement. After development, testing and evaluation had to be done on the prototype. To test the prototype, simulation played a very major role. By use of rheostat to vary speeds and a string of saved coordinates that represent a route, speed limit and route adherence were tested. The prototype was found to be able to detect posted speed limits and compare the vehicles speed with them and report whether a violation happened or not. Simulation also showed that the route violation was possible. To evaluate the prototype, two parameters were looked at. A utility and usability test was done on the prototype. Questionnaires were used to collect data pertaining utility and usability and analysis and interpretation done. It was noted that the prototype was able perform the functions it was designed. A SUS approach of usability was used to evaluate how usable the prototype after development. In conclusion a model to monitor speed limit and route adherence, which was a major project objective, was developed. The prototype was developed basing on the model and combines standardized off-shelf parts and technologies for its wholesome assembly. These means that it can be used anywhere in world but we mostly target developing countries. The system uses technologies such as Microcontroller processing board, GPS, GSM, GPRS Shell, and a remote server.
Keywords: Speed Limit; GPS; Route Adherence.
Title: A Real-Time Embedded System for Speed Limit and Route Adherence Monitoring for Matatu Saccos
Author: ZACHARY S. SAKWA, ENG. LAWRENCE. G. MUCHEMI
International Journal of Computer Science and Information Technology Research
ISSN 2348-1196 (print), ISSN 2348-120X (online)
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