At this time of year, waiting for a shuttle can be particularly discouraging. Maybe you just missed one, maybe three in a row just left, or maybe no shuttle has come your way for 20 minutes. In any case, a tool to end many of those problems will be available to you in the next few days—the Shuttle Tracking System.
The tracking system will allow you to view the locations of all the shuttles on campus in your web browser at http://shuttles.rpi.edu/ and plan your travels across campus accordingly. The site will be available starting early Thursday evening.
The pilot launch of the system will kick off this Thursday in the McNeil Room. From between 3 pm to 10 pm, volunteers from the Senate will be showing the system on a large screen in the front of the room and fielding any questions and feedback you may have.
Following the pilot launch, you’ll be seeing advertising for the system across campus and on the shuttles themselves. In the coming weeks, you’ll also begin to see incremental improvements as we gather feedback and fix bugs. Although bugs are inevitable in such a rapid and widespread launch, we ask that you bear with us and e-mail any problems you may have to feedback@rpisenate.com.
Additionally, the Java applet at http://shuttles.rpi.edu will not be the only interface to the system. We’re currently looking for students interested in seeking academic credit to work on improvements to the system. A few such improvements could be ways to make the shuttle data from the system more readily accessible through mediums ranging from large sign displays to a phone system providing shuttle arrival times. Visit http://courses.rpisenate.com/ for details.
The tracking system is based on a global positioning system receiver located in each shuttle. GPS receivers track their current longitude and latitude by connecting to three of the 24 GPS satellites orbiting at around 12,600 miles above the Earth. Once its position is determined, the unit can generate other information such as speed and sensory input.
The tracking unit on each bus then transmits all its data over the Internet every 15-20 seconds via a Cingular (now AT&T) data modem to a company called ITrak, which provides the actual service that keeps track of the shuttles. From there, a server here on campus retrieves the longitudes and latitudes and stores them in a database. Finally, the Java applet you visit at http://shuttles.rpi.edu/ retrieves the coordinates for display to your screen with a refresh rate of about 15 seconds.
I would like to conclude by pointing to those people and organizations without whom this system would not be a reality. In no particular order, they are: former Grand Marshal Max Yates, Mary Alice O’Brien, Professor Jeff Miner, Carol Wager, Claude Rounds and the entire Administration Division, MapInfo, Cingular, ITrak, Jonathan Bidwell, Lam Tran, Brian Keating, and a multitude of others inside and outside of the Student Senate.
