PDA-Based Portable Data Collection System for Commercial Vehicle Inspection

More than 1,300,000 Level 1 commercial vehicle inspections - a safety-critical, time-consuming, often difficult and painstaking process, especially as regards the brake inspection component -- are performed every year in the United States, under all sorts of weather and lighting conditions. The current technology used adds to the complexity and error potential inherent in this important task. International Electronic Machines Corp. will develop a PDA-based Portable Data Collection System which will reduce the inspection time by more than 50%, simplify all operations involved, drastically reduce the occurrence of errors, and provide automatic updates form and queries to the ASPEN database. IEM demostrated all these were practical and possible in Phase I; in Phase II, IEM will make the potential an actuality, through the use of one-handed PDA-based data entry, automated, secure wireless uplink and downlink from the PDA to a base station, automated updates and queries to and from ASPEN, a machine - vision based automated brake measurement system, automatic barcode entry of license and other document data, and a completely hands-free voice-activated command and control system for many functions. A ruggedized case and inexpensive accessories make this practical even in poor weather and lighting conditions.