Technology to Improve upon APC Data Counting that will Provide Better Correlation to Service Plan

Automated Passenger Counter (APC) has been used in the transit systems for automated passenger counting and reporting. These systems have suffered counting accuracy issues, particularly at high rider load points, and at end-of-line count reconciliation. It was found that APCs have limited use on rail vehicles due to very wide doors. It has also been a challenge for transit agencies to track the origin and destination of riders. Traditionally, tracking the origin and destination of riders has been done using labor intensive and costly origin and destination surveys. Therefore it is desired to have a system that can automatically track riders. In Phase I, Migma Systems propose to develop a standalone APC sensor using stereo camera and laser scanner. To accurately count multiple passengers boarding and alighting transit vehicles, the sensor uses the laser scanner to identify passenger and map them to the corresponding stereo images for minimizing the false detections. To track a particular passenger, this sensor can also extract a set of occlusion–proof biometrics used to find the same boarding and alighting passenger in the same transit vehicle. Moreover the passenger counts, images, biometrics, GPS and transit vehicle ID can be wirelessly transmitted to a remote server..