Abstract:
As the world's population grows, the number of public transport users increases almost at the
same rate, which creates a need for a higher offer in terms of the number of public transport
vehicles, thus ensuring the best traveler’s experience. However, transportation companies still
have the challenge to control the correct money made by their vehicles due to some unfair
drivers who steal part of the income for their personal use as a traditional solution, Supervisors
are engaged to guarantee that the buses are used properly. Most particularly in Rwanda's public
transportation sector, unfair public transportation drivers have been boarding people after leaving
the departure station but before reaching the destination station. In this research, an analysis of
the public transportation business in Rwanda has been done to understand the ecosystem of
public transportation service providers in Rwanda; key operational difficulties from discussions
with public transportation company owners and managers have also been carried out. The
findings from an interview with 20 public bus owners and 18 public transportation company
managers showed that most drivers claim less income than is actually earned, and the claim is
likely much higher, that is according to 98 percent of the bus owners and 90 percent of the
managers questioned. An IoT-based seat occupancy monitoring system has now been designed
and prototyped for public transport vehicles to improve and facilitate companies to know all their
income without being misled by their staff by detecting seat occupancy, computing a passenger's
distance traveled, and calculating the distance fee in real time. Indeed, the system prototyped in
this project can be installed in each company's vehicle to daily monitor and report various events
that occur within vehicles during service, allowing an alternative estimation of revenues
generated by the vehicle based on seat occupancy as a function of passenger distance traveled.
And costs which were spent on paying the supervisors will be spared in the long run by
increasing the company's return on investment. A collection of future works and views has been
assessed as a result of this research project, including vehicle mechanical condition monitoring in
order to ensure timely vehicle repair. In contrast to the existing literature, this mostly focuses on
smart transportation; this study resulted in an innovative use of seat weight sensor and Hall
Effect sensor to provide a solution to address the issue. A smart phone’s application that allows
passengers to see available free seats as well as their exact location in the coming bus is
suggested, and also a leveraged artificial intelligence is necessary after gathering enough data for
the system to be smarter than its current version.
