1 research outputs found
Estimating Passenger Loading on Train Cars Using Accelerometer
Crowding on train cars is a common problem plaguing the major public transit
agencies around the world. On one hand a crowded train car presents a negative
experience for the passengers, while on the other hand it indicated
inefficiencies in the train system. The Federal Transit Agency is interested in
reducing the crowding level on public transit train cars. Automatic passenger
counters (APC) are commonly used to count the passengers boarding and alighting
the train cars. Advanced APC solutions are available based on EO/IR sensors and
visual object detection technology, but are considerably expensive for large
scale deployment. This report discusses a low-cost approach to APC by using
accelerometer measurements from train car to estimate approximate passenger
loading. Accelerometer sensor can measure train car vibration as the train
moves along the rail tracks. The train car vibration changes with the passenger
loading on the car. Detecting this change in vibration pattern with changing
passenger loading level is key to the accelerometer based APC solution.
Moreover, accelerometer sensors present a low-cost APC solution compared to
existing EO/IR based APCs. This work presents a (i) theoretical model analysis
(ii) experimental data driven approach to demonstrate the feasibility of using
accelerometer for passenger loading estimation.Comment: Work performed under Phase I SBIR grant DTRT5717C10231 from the Volpe
National Transportation Systems Center, US Department of Transportatio