Welcome

This is the website where you will find all of the information on the My Stevens Shuttle Senior Design Project.

Project Overview

Executive Summary:

The shuttle is a bus for students that live in off-campus sites, such as Riva Point. The way the system works is that off campus students call the driver directly and request for the shuttle to come to the location. The driver is constantly on the cell phone with students and has to prioritize his route without the aid of any dispatch system.

Problem Statement:

Currently, there is a problem with the Stevens Shuttle System.

The Stevens Shuttle system uses a van and a driver to pick up students that are located on off campus housing.
There are 3 main issues:
1. Students are always calling the driver on his or her cellphone. The problem is that the driver is constantly on the cell phone which leads to liability issues with talking on the cell phone and driving at the same time.
2. In addition, the driver has a hard time prioritizing the route for best efficiency.
3. Students cannot accurately determine how far the shuttle is and what the ETA on their pick up is.

Possible Concepts:

Our group looked at 4 possible concepts to solve the above problems:

  1. Scheduling System
  2. Hiring a dispatcher
  3. Map inside driver’s car with LED matrix
  4. Web Based GPS request and tracking system

We ended up selecting concept 4 because it was able to solve all three of our problems. The concept uses a webform the student fills out and sends to a server. The server then forwards this request to a screen located in the driver’s car. The screen will also be able to display a best route for the driver to take. Subsequently, the route that is displayed on the driver’s screen will also be available online for the student to view and estimate an ETA.