AUTOMATED BUS TRANSPORTATION SYSTEM

iii

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page
INTRODUCTION
Background of the Existing System

Statement of the Problem

Objectives

Significance

Scope and Limitations

REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE AND STUDIES

Related Literature

Related Studies

METHODOLOGY
Locale of the Project

Process

BIBLIOGRAPHY

APPENDICES
Appendix A

Appendix B

11

Appendix C

13

Appendix D

14

iv

INTRODUCTION

Background of the Existing System

A bus is a road vehicle designed to carry many passengers. Buses can have a capacity
as high as 300 passengers. Buses operate with low capacity and can operate on conventional
roads, with relatively inexpensive bus stops to serve passengers. Therefore buses are
commonly used in smaller cities, towns, and rural areas, as well as for shuttle services
supplementing other means of transit in large cities.
Buses are commonly equipped by engines that are powered by petroleum diesel.
Petroleum diesel is one of the fossil fuels that contribute large quantities of greenhouse gases.
Burning petroleum at extremely high temperatures is the primary means by which electricity
produced for the bus to mobilize.
For mass public transportation, buses are use here in the Philippines because of its
large population. All buses here in the country are manually operated by a driver. Manual
operation involves human intervention that may bring errors and undesirable results. Accidents
in the road are the causes of human errors and carelessness.
The project that will be developed by the proponents is an automated bus transportation
system. This project will bring convenient, safety and energy efficient transportation for
commuters.

Statement of the Problem

One of problems encountered in bus transportation is overloaded capacity of

passengers in a bus. There is no restriction in the number of passengers in a bus as long as all
the passengers are fitted in.
Another problem present is the use of petroleum diesel that contributes pollution. Fossil
fuels is not an efficient energy for transportation and it a waste of natural resources.
In transportation, traffic is always present and accidents are unavoidable. In a road that
has many types of vehicles like big trucks and buses, traffic will be the result of the mixture of
big and small vehicles. There are always accidents if there are traffics.

2
Objectives

The general objective of the project is to design and develop an automated bus
transportation system.
Specifically, the project aims to:
1. automatically count and display the number of passengers;
2. limit the number of passengers inside the bus;
3. develop an electric powered bus;
4. design a dedicated lane for bus transportation; and
5. construct a miniature Automated Bus Transportation System

Significance

Buses are fueled by petroleum diesel and through combustion of this substance;
undesirable chemical will be produce that is harmful to our environment. Burning fossil fuels
brought destruction to the nature which is harmful to the people living in it. There many
alternative source of energy besides fossil fuels like renewable energy such as solar energy and
wind energy. These sources of energy contribute large amount of electricity which is efficient for
powering such big vehicles like trucks and buses. Electric powered vehicles are efficient
nowadays that it saves energy and conserves the environment.
In land transportation, buses are used for massive transportation but bus transportation
companies dont implement secure and safety of the passengers. Bus drivers do not mind the
safety of the passengers because most of the time they did not limit the number of passengers.
Even with the durability and heavy load capacity handling of the bus, drivers should not be
confident with the characteristic of the bus to hold a large amount of passengers. Restriction on
the number of passengers is important to prevent casualties and accidents in the road.
With the different types of vehicles present in the road, there is a mixture of small and
big vehicles. Without categorizing the lanes of the road, there is a bound of traffic to happen. All
the buses here in the Philippines are manually driven and the maneuvering such a big vehicle is
dependent on the driver. Bus drivers must be very skilled in handling the bus in difficult
situations. In busy and congested road, human errors are mostly cause of accidents and
casualties in the road.

3
Scope and Limitations

The project is limited only in the development and implementation of automated bus
transportation system.
The project has the following features:
1. The system automatically counts and displays the number of passengers.
2. The system automatically closes the bus door if the number of passengers reaches to
thirty (30).
3. The bus will automatically run if the door is close.
4. The system has a dedicated lane for the bus to run and follow.
5. The system is composed of two terminals.
The project has the following limitations:
1. The system will only close the bus door if the number of passengers reaches to 30.
Below and above thirty (30) will not make the bus door close.
2. The system will only run the bus if the door is close.
3. The bus will only run at the lane where it is specifically designed for it. The system will
only allow the bus to run in the dedicated lane.
4. The system will only stop the bus at the next terminal.
5. The system will only open the bus door when the bus stops.
6. The system is supplied by two power supplies. One supply will not compensate the
power needed by the system.

REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE AND STUDIES

Related Literature

Autonomous vehicles have been present in industry for decades as a means for
automated transportation of goods and objects. They are usually guided in the environment
using some kind of artificial markers on dedicated environments. It is well known that the use of
private vehicles in large cities leads to high levels of energy consumption, causing
environmental pollution and acoustic noise. New technologies applied to public transports offer
a new generation of environmentally friendly vehicles. These vehicles, powered by electric
engines, are silent and clean. Automated vehicles are becoming increasingly popular in public
transportation systems because they provide reductions in congestion and improved traffic flow
(Fernandez et. al., 2013).
At present, the topic of automated vehicles is one of the most promising research areas
in the field of Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS). The use of automated vehicles for public
transportation also contributes to reductions in congestion levels and to improvements in traffic
flow. Moreover, electrical public autonomous vehicles are environmentally friendly, provide
better air quality and contribute to energy conservation. The driverless public transportation
systems which are at present operating in some airports and train stations are restricted to
dedicated roads and exhibit serious trouble dynamically avoiding obstacles in the trajectory
(Dominguez et. al., 2013).
Some of the advantages exhibited by autonomous vehicles can be described as follows:
no driving license is needed; elderly or handicapped people can use them conveniently; parking
manoeuvres can be assisted or fully executed by the vehicle in autonomous mode. There are
many international projects aiming to develop these types of vehicles. One of the most relevant
projects developed in the USA is the DARPA Urban Challenge 2007. This project promoted
research in the field of autonomous vehicles on urban scenarios, with a focus on military
applications. A detailed description of the different layers of the navigation system (mission
planning, behavioural and motion planning) of the vehicles that qualified first and second in the
challenge is provided in autonomous driving in urban environments: Boss and the urban
challenge and the Stanford entry in the urban challenge, respectively. A description of all of the
vehicles that participated in the challenge is described in the DARPA Urban Challenge
Autonomous Vehicles in City Traffic (Alonso et. al., 2013).

5
Related Studies

(Fernandez et. al., 2013) developed an autonomous electric micro-bus with a capacity
for 14 persons. Although the separate algorithmic components of the proposed system do not
outperform the current state of the art solutions, as represented by the results in the DARPA
Urban Challenge, it is worth noting that previous contributions were not specifically devised for
high capacity public transport vehicles, but for passenger cars. Previous autonomous vehicles
for people transportation operate in restricted areas without obstacle avoidance capabilities. The
presented approach is specifically designed to avoid obstacles, such as pedestrians, using a
multi-beam LIDAR sensor. The results presented here were obtained in the context of a
demonstration event in the 2012 IEEE Intelligent Vehicle Symposium. A total of 196 people got
a ride in the micro-bus, completing a total of 28 laps (725 metres long each) on a private circuit.
During the ride, the bus performed automatic pedestrian avoidance manoeuvres. The
demonstration was accomplished without incidences, which constitutes one of the main
contributions of this work. In addition, the large number of people involved in the experiments
offered us the opportunity to get valuable feedback regarding system performance. Impressions,
as described by the passengers, are also provided and analysed.
Partner for Advanced Transportation Technology (PATH) demonstrates automated bus
rapid transit technologies. PATH has equipped three transit buses with the sensing, actuation,
communication and computation systems needed to enable them to operate under completely
automatic control. At the same time, these buses were equipped with a specially-designed
driver-vehicle interface (DVI) system to show how easy it is for the driver to interact with the
automation systems, to transfer back and forth between normal manual driving and automation
and to initiate automated maneuvers such as lane changing on the highway and precision
docking at local bus stops. The emphasis of the system was showing the realistic opportunities
for implementation of the A-BRT technologies to improve transit service and economics. Path
constructed two standard-size (40 foot) buses powered by compressed natural gas (CNG) and
one 60-foot articulated bus powered by a diesel engine; it was also possible to show how the
automation technologies can harmonize the performance of these very different vehicles so that
they can operate close together in an electronically-coupled "virtual train" (Shladover, 2003).

METHODOLOGY

Locale of the Project Study

The hardware implementation of the project was done at one of the proponents house
at Mundog Subdivision, Kidapawan City. The project was evaluated at the College of
Engineering and Computing, University of Southern Mindanao.

Procedure

The project is all about Automated Bus Transportation System. The system is focus on
automatic passenger counting, automatic opening and closing of the bus door and automatic
driving of the bus.
Initially, the bus door is open and the passenger counter is reset to zero. The passenger
counter will start to count if someone passes through the doorway. The sensor will be triggered
if there is an obstruction between the infrared receiver and transmitter. The passenger counter
will count up until thirty (30) and once it will reach number thirty (30), the system will
automatically close bus the door. If the bus door is close, another pair of infrared sensors will be
triggered and it will activate the relay. Once the relay is activated, it will connect the source of
power to motors of the bus and the bus will mobilize to run through the lane. The bus will follow
the dedicated lane using two pairs of infrared sensors which is at the left and right corner of the
bumper of the bus. The dedicated lane is colored black to enable the sensors to differentiate the
dedicated lane to the other lane. The bus will only stop if it gets to the other terminal. The other
terminal will trigger the front sensor of the bus. Once the front sensor is triggered, the bus will
stop by opening the bus door deactivating the relay that connects to the motors.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Fernandez, C., Dominguez, R., Fernandez-Llorca, D., Alonso, J., & Sotelo, M. 2013. Autonomous Navigation and Obstacle Avoidance of a Micro-bus. International Journal of
Advanced Robotic Systems, Vol. 10, 212.
Shladover, S. 2003. PATH Demonstrates Automated Rapid Transit Technology. Retrieved December 27, 2003, from https://faculty.washington.edu/jbs/itrans/siteindx.htm

APPENDICES

9
APPENDIX A. Diagrams of the Study
i.

Flow diagram (system flow chart)

10
ii.

Schematic diagram

11
APPENDIX B. Parts Specifications and Characteristics

Infrared (IR) receiver

- hardware that sends information from an infrared remote

control to another device by receiving and decoding
signals. In general, the receiver outputs a code to uniquely
identify the infrared signal that it receives.

Infrared (IR) transmitter

- a source of light energy in the infrared spectrum. It is a

light emitting diode (LED) that is used in order to transmit
infrared signals from a remote control.

LM324 (Operational Amplifier)

- devices consist of four independent high-gain frequencycompensated operational amplifiers that are designed
specifically to operate from a single supply over a wide
range of voltages.

4026 IC

16-pin CMOS seven-segment counter from

the

4000

series. It counts clock pulses and returns the output in a

form which can be displayed on a seven-segment display.
7408 IC (AND Gate)

- quad 2-input AND gate.

7404 IC (NOT Gate)

- hex inverter.

7432 IC (OR Gate)

- quad 2-input OR gate.

L293D

- quadruple high-current half-H drivers. The L293 is

designed to provide bidirectional drive currents of up to 1 A
at voltages from 4.5 V to 36 V.

IC 7805

- a voltage regulator integrated circuit. It is a member of

78xx series of fixed linear voltage regulator ICs. The
voltage source in a circuit may have fluctuations and would
not give the fixed voltage output.

1N4001 Diode

family

of

popular

1.0 A

(ampere)

purpose silicon rectifier diodes commonly

adapters for

common

household

used

general
in AC

appliances. Blocking

voltage varies from 50 to 1000 volts.

BC547

- NPN bi-polar junction transistor. A transistor, stands for

transfer of resistance, is commonly used to amplify current.

12
A small current at its base controls a larger current at
collector & emitter terminals.
Relay

- an electromagnetic device which is used to isolate two

circuits electrically and connect them magnetically. They
are very useful devices and allow one circuit to switch
another one while they are completely separate. They are
often used to interface an electronic circuit (working at a
low voltage) to an electrical circuit which works at very high
voltage.

Trimmer

- a miniature adjustable electrical component. Trimmers

can

be

variable

resistors

(potentiometers),

variable

capacitors, and trimmable inductors. They are common in

precision circuitry like A/V components, and may need to
be adjusted when the equipment is serviced.
Resistor

- a passive component used to control current in a circuit.

Its resistance is given by the ratio of voltage applied across
its terminals to the current passing through it. Thus a
particular value of resistor, for fixed voltage, limits the
current through it. They are omnipresent in electronic
circuits.

Electric motor

- an electrical machine that converts electrical energy into

mechanical energy. The reverse conversion of mechanical
energy into electrical

energy is

done

by

an electric

generator.
7-segment display

- form of electronic display device for displaying decimal

numerals that is an alternative to the more complex dot
matrix displays.

13
APPENDIX C. Bill of Materials

Name of component

Unit price

Quanity

Total

IR receiver

6 Php

30 Php

IR emitter

6 Php

30 Php

LM324 IC

30 Php

30 Php

4026 IC

30 Php

60 Php

7408 IC

25 Php

25 Php

7404 IC

25 Php

25 Php

7432 IC

25 Php

25 Php

L293D IC

100 Php

100 Php

IC 7805

15 Php

15 Php

1.50 Php

1.50 Php

BC547 transistor

15 Php

15 Php

9V Relay

20 Php

20 Php

7-segment display

25 Php

50 Php

10k trimmer

12 Php

36 Php

0.50 Php

10

5 Php

1N4001 diode

10k & 1k resistors

TOTAL AMOUNT

417.50 Php