Geofencing Technology Unleashes the Imagination of Fleet Operators

Progressively, administrators of vehicle armadas, for example, shared electric bikes, conveyance trucks and school transports are going to an innovation called geofencing to guarantee protected, productive and suitable utilization of their vehicles. The contracting cost of the innovation is additionally empowering more modest vehicles and expert resources for be followed and overseen cost-actually.

What Is Geofencing?

According to Dev Bhatia, chief marketing officer for Momentum IoT, a geofence is a virtual border drawn around a location or area on a map. The perimeter of that border is set and managed typically by a fleet manager, using either a handheld or desktop computer application.

“To set up a geofence stage,” he makes sense of, “you want three things: a little ‘edge’ gadget that can lay out the GPS area of a resource, an association from that gadget to a cloud server, and an association from the server to an application on a cell phone or personal computer.”

Geofencing gadgets, which are connected to a vehicle or other resource for following, are as a rule about the size of a cellphone and empowered by a GPS chipset, adds Bhatia. They can be connected to the power arrangement of a vehicle or utilize little, convenient batteries. The gadgets are generally rented to armada administrators for a couple of dollars each month, per vehicle.

Thinking Outside the Fence

The benefits of geofencing are as varied as its applications. The edge devices are often paired with accelerometers, for example, to allow fleet managers to know not only where their vehicles are, but also when they stop and start moving.

Administrators of school transport armadas, for instance, can utilize geofencing to guarantee that transport drivers are not surpassing assigned speed limits, leaving their assigned courses or waiting too lengthy in any one area, all of which can add cost and obligation to a school locale record. Geofencing can likewise assist with temporary supervisors screen and check the driving way of behaving of their transport administrators would it be a good idea for it at any point be addressed by the nearby local area.

As indicated by Bhatia, geofencing can likewise assist with short lived administrators of utility trucks or plumbing trucks streamline their directing, which can improve both functional proficiency and income for the business.

“An administrator of administration trucks can drop an area pin at each place of work, then, at that point, make a geofence around each pin,” he makes sense of. “With a geofencing application, the armada supervisor can then screen when vehicles enter and leave those help areas and settle on continuous conclusions about which truck is nearest and generally accessible to go to the following place of work.”

Ensuring Safe, Responsible Riding

Micromobility startup Superpedestrian uses geofencing to monitor the behavior of its LINK e-scooter riders.

According to Lou Alejo, a company software engineer, Superpedestrian has recently introduced a new application called Pedestrian Defense that monitors both the speed and location of its scooter fleet at all times. This data helps ensure the safety of LINK riders and compliance with local city ordinances.

“Pedestrian Defense uses a combination of GPS data, scooter sensor data and machine learning to determine a scooter’s location with pinpoint accuracy,” says Alejo. “It then maps that data against rules for geofenced areas to ensure riders follow the local rules at all times.”

In urban communities where walkway riding of e-bikes isn’t permitted, for instance, the application carries the Connection bike to a full stop promptly after a rider attempting to ride it on the walkway. It likewise identifies and forestalls incorrect way riding and forceful turning. Furthermore, toward the finish of a ride, it implements safe stopping of the bike.

Taking Care of Business

As the cost of producing and leasing geofencing technology has come down, observes Bhatia, so too has the size of objects and assets that can now be tracked with geofencing technology.

His company offers a beacon-like device called a Toolie that can be attached to individual tools. A geofence set up around a GPS-enabled device on the truck carrying these tools can help a construction manager know, for example, if tools are no longer within the geofence and that they may have been left behind.

“Geofencing combined with Toolies can assist with short lived supervisors monitor more modest, more affordable resources without the requirement for heaps of constant calls between the director and his laborers,” notices Bhatia.

Progressively, he adds, geofences are likewise used to give security to development resources or other hardware doled out to a decent area for a proper timeframe.

“We can set a geofence around a resource like a light pinnacle or a porta potty,” Bhatia proposes. “Assuming that that gear moves outside the geofence we need to accept possibly it’s been taken or an unapproved individual is playing with our hardware. This innovation can assist with overseeing costs for ‘armadas’ of fixed and versatile gear the same.”

Adding Automation and Flexibility

Geofencing technology is also becoming more automated and hence better able to support dynamic urban requirements, notes Alejo.

“It used to be that geofences were either on all the time or off all the time for a given geographic location,” he says. “We could change their status and the requirements for that zone, but that required a lot of manual technician time.”

Scheduled geofencing, which Alejo helped develop at Superpedestrian, changed all that.

Now, he continues, a city can set up dynamic geofences around areas such as major league ballparks or schools. With scheduled geofencing, scooter riding might be allowed during non-school hours or on weekends, or in a city during the baseball offseason. Scheduling information loaded on the scooter, however, would enforce lower speed limits during school hours, or prevent any riding at all at times before, during and after games when pedestrian baseball fans might be entering or leaving a stadium.

“Scheduled geofencing definitely helps ensure safety for riders and pedestrians alike, and it helps cities feel like they’ve got greater control over the flow of traffic within their boundaries,” says Alejo.

Geofencing scheduling information is uploaded to LINK scooters on a regular or as-needed basis, he adds.

Tracking What’s Next

In Bhatia’s estimation, geofencing technology will continue to get smaller, cheaper and more capable. And as that happens, the size and value of assets tracked and managed by geofences will also continue to shrink.

“Individuals generally have related geofencing innovation with long stretch trucks, however as the expenses and size of the innovation contract, we’re similarly prone to utilize it to oversee armadas of golf trucks or drills,” he recommends.

So what is geofencing going to resemble from here on out? Assuming the historical backdrop of innovation is any pointer, Bhatia says, people will keep on thinking of new and more creative ways of applying geofencing innovation.

“We’re not even close to the endpoint of purpose cases for geofencing innovation regarding size, cost or ability,” he asserts. “I can hardly hold on to see what’s straightaway.”