Busview
Project site:
http://www.its.washington.edu/projects/busview_overview.html
Digital Ventures helps projects bridge the gap between creating
a prototype of a new technology and deploying the project outside the university.
More often than not, conventional funding mechanisms do not provide support
for getting from a prototype to a working product.
Busview is an example of how Digital Ventures facilitates this transition by
working with a project to license early-stage technology to an organization.
Digital Ventures uses the mechanisms in the UW copyright policy to direct revenue
received from licensing to support the effort required to transfer the technology.
Thus, the developers agreed that the licensing proceeds could be used to further
develop the software, to create more licensable information assets.
Description
Busview is a platform-independent display of the current position of selected
transit vehicles available to anyone with access to the internet. The location
of transit vehicles is updated in real-time providing an interactive digital
map that displays the current location, vehicle number and route number
for every bus employed by a regional transit carrier (as shown in the screenshot
above.)
Additionally, for any particular bus, a route progress bar can be displayed
(as shown in the screenshot below). Alarms can be placed along the route
that inform the user when the bus has reached a particular location, allowing
the user to more accurately plan when to leave for a bus stop.
Technology Benefits
Along with other technologies in the Smart Trek program, Busview aspires
to reduce the travel time of Americans by at least 15 percent. Currently
a major factor dissuading individuals from using public transportation
is a lack of information. This includes not knowing when a bus is running
late and when the next bus is scheduled to arrive. Nothing is more frustrating
than rushing to the bus stop and not knowing if the bus has just passed,
or will arrive shortly. Busview removes this uncertainty, informing its
users exactly where a bus is located. Busview can even provide an alarm
that tells the user when a bus has reached a particular location. Hopefully
by removing some of the uncertainty associated with using public transportation,
individuals will be more comfortable with it and more willing to ride
a bus.
Development Background
Busview is part of a $13.7 million public and private consortium called Smart
Trek being developed in the Intelligent Transportation Systems Research Group
(ITS)
at the University of Washington under the leadership of Daniel
J. Dailey. The project includes partners such as the King County Department
of Transportation, the cities of Bellevue and Seattle, the Federal Highway Administration,
and private companies such as Microsoft and Boeing. Busview leverages a previously
installed system employed by King County’s regional transit center called the
Automatic Vehicle Location (AVL) system. AVL provides location information to
Metro Transit. Using self-describing data (SDD), Busview adds an advanced graphical
user interface that shares bus information with travelers using their personal
web browsers. Metro Transit pays ITS to maintain the bus information service,
and that money is reinvested into the project.
Future Goals
Metro Transit has already put up monitors to display the Busview information
at two major commuter stops, and the Busview system can handle expansion
to additional locations.
A related project that is being developed by the ITS is MyBus,
which uses a prediction algorithm to estimate the arrival time of a particular
bus at a particular stop. MyBus is currently available and in use in King
County and has a demonstration available for the Portland Tri-Met area.
Both Busview and MyBus are components of the ITS Smart Trek research project.
Digital Ventures' Role
Digital Ventures has worked with the Busview project to help the technology
grow by managing and consolidating the complex intellectual property rights
related to Busview, and licensing the technology to Digital Recorders, Inc.
for commercialization. Digital Recorders, Inc. hopes to introduce Busview into
other metropolitan regional services, and if successful will return significant
resources to the UW and the Busview project. A license agreement between the
UW and King County’s Metro
Transit was also signed in the summer of 2002 to bring Busview into use
in our local Metro transportation system. This collaboration between Dailey's
lab and King County Metro is a clear example of how UW research can result in
the teaching and implementation of technology that benefits our local region.
Contact
Daniel J. Dailey, Professor (Research Track)
Department of Electrical Engineering
University of Washington
Box 352500
M322 EE/CSE Building
Seattle, WA 98195
Phone: (206) 543-2493
Fax: (206) 616-1787
E-mail: dailey@its.washington.edu
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