Below are some examples of how the Living Lab Bus is being used in testing and developing new solutions. You can also read about some experiences and insights –> here <– (in Finnish).
Better (road) weather predictions
Foreca uses the Living Lab Bus for developing new solutions for measuring and predicting weather and road weather based on data collected from buses serving as mobile sensor platforms.
Bus design and user experience
The bus manufacturer Linkker is pursuing intelligent eMobility with energy and operations efficient, digitalized electric buses. In Living Lab Bus, they – along with the public transport authority – gain feedback about the user experience in the electric buses as well as ideas for what would make travel more attractive.
Collecting passenger feedback
Swiss Innovation Lab is testing their customer feedback solution to both get feedback on the system’s features and use as well as allowing it to be used as one channel to collect input from passengers about various other aspects.
Mobile sensor platform for urban air quality
Using Vaisala‘s sensor hardware installed on top of a bus, EEE Innovations collects information about emissions and air quality along the bus route.
Foreca as well have tested a sensor package installed outside of the electric bus to capture various measurements of not only the road and weather but also air quality.
Monitoring transport infrastructure health
The Finnish Transport Agency and VTT have installed a system in a bus to monitor the health index of bridges along the bus route. The system analyzes the vibration and response of the bridges to, over time, detect characteristic changes for optimizing maintenance work based on need. The project is carried out in close cooperation with Yamaguchi University and Kozo Keikaku Engineering Inc. from Japan.
Optimization of driving behaviour
EEE Innovations is developing and implementing tools for managing the public transport system as a whole by optimizing driving based on e.g. speed, schedule, energy consumption and passenger comfort of individual vehicles as well as the fleet as a whole (e.g. avoiding queueing and avoiding needless accelerations). The solution utilizes data from the vehicle CAN bus.
Passenger counting solutions
VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland has tested camera-based solutions identifying human shapes for passenger counting purposes. The solution identifies human figures and does calculations without storing or transferring any privacy related information.
Passenger views on localized advertising
An Aalto University student group collected feedback on how passengers perceived localized advertisement. Screens in the buses informed ab out a couple small specialized shops along the bus route and the passengers were asked how they feel about such information.
Road slipperiness detection
The CAN bus data available from the vehicles is used by EEE Innovations for detecting road slipperiness without the need of additional sensors installments.
Transport network data collection
Vaisala‘s Viominer solution is installed behind the windshield of a bus in order to collect and report data about the traveled transport network.