Field of the invention:-
The invention relates to management of car pools in general and to a system and a method of mega car pool management in particular.
Background and prior art:-
Present carpools (called 'micro' carpools in this description to highlight contrast with the proposed Mega Carpool) by and large operate in the following manner:
Car owners living in same/nearby/along-the-way localities working in same/nearby/along-the-way offices, having same timings of going to work and coming back, make an arrangement among themselves wherein they bring their cars on different week days by rotation.
Each member benefits as he/she plies his/her car for just one day in a week but avails car journey for all five days.
A partner not possessing a car, shares fuel expenses with other partners. Similarly, a casual partner, who shares same travel needs once in a while, also shares fuel expenses of other partners proportionate to the travel facility availed.
The drawbacks/shortcomings of the existing method of micro carpools are as under.
(i) Safety issue:
Sharing car with a stranger with unverified credentials can pose serious risk to the life and property of a commuter. Therefore, unless the partners know each other well, they are hesitant to join a carpool. (ii) It is difficult to find reliable partners with consistently matching
travel needs: The present system requires someone interested in setting a micro car-pool to find about 3 to 4 car-pool partners who
A) Are reliable in all respects and
B) Have consistent and matching travel needs characterized by:
They should live in same/nearby/along-the-way localities.
They should have their work destination in same/nearby/along-the-way localities on a consistent basis.
Their timings of going to work as well as of coming back from work should match with each other on a consistent basis.
The difficulty in finding such suitable partners is considerable and insurmountable for most people, especially because urban residents have very limited interaction outside work situations. Only the car owners who work in big organizations may be able to find suitable partners living in their locality and
working in their organization, with some help from their HR/CSR departments. In fact, car pooling is presently by and large restricted to such persons. There are websites that have come up during last 3 to 4 years trying to set up carpools, but success of these websites has been very limited. This paper argues that the carpool websites will never be able to realize full potential of ridesharing, because they are promoting a fundamentally restrictive concept - micro carpools.
(iii) Unreasonable consistency demand: The micro carpool expects its members to have a rigid and repetitive travel plan every day, because both in morning and evening, pool car would be available only at predetermined place and time. If any member has a change in his/her schedule on a particular day because of any official/social/personal commitment, he/she has to arrange for alternate mode of transport. The member who on a particular day has his/her turn to ply car feels particularly compelled to not change his travel schedule on that day, as any such change will put other members to a lot of inconvenience.
(iv) No help for during-the-day' and different-from-regular travel destinations: A carpool partner may reasonably have travel needs during day time for which his 'work-home' carpool offers no assistance. Similarly, a carpool partner who has a different-from-regular travel destination on some days gets no
help from his rigid carpool. Little wonder that people who have changing destinations or day-time travel needs (such as marketing/audit/inspection personnel) do not participate in a carpool.
(v) Feeling shortchanged: Members often end up feeling that they have given more rides than they have availed from other members. Investment in expanding transportation system capacity has not occurred. The result of fast paced growth and slow transportation system investment is a loss of mobility for people and goods due to increasing levels of traffic congestion. A high-occupancy-vehicle (HOV) program can improve overall mobility in the most congested parts of our region by increasing the people moving efficiency and capacity of freeways and arterials.
Our objective is to provide low cost HOV improvements that could be implemented to provide immediate mobility improvements. The goal is to create a high profile city-wide action program to achieve reduction in pollution, traffic, road accidents etc.
Carpooling (also known as car-sharing, ride-sharing, lift-sharing), is the shared use of a car by the driver and one or more passengers, usually for commuting.
The Objective is to implement a GPS based Car pool tracking System and for tracking, boarding, alighting of passengers, monitoring of cars, assigning trips and for billing the end customer/Commuter. The present invention seeks to overcome the drawbacks of the prior art.
Summary Of The Invention:-
The invention provides a car share scheme for businesses and residents in a metropolitan area. It is proposed that the scheme will be supported by a dedicated web site and call centre. Individuals will be able to register their journeys online or by phone and their details will be matched with potential stiarers stored on the scheme's database. It should be noted that the website provides practical advice to people seeking to share lifts, including guidance on personal security issues.
Many businesses in metropolitan areas have difficulty recruiting and retaining staff due to transport problems and travel surveys have shown that a large number of employees travel long distances to get to work. The scheme will therefore be promoted directly to business in High Peak Borough. In order, however, for the scheme to be more attractive and inclusive of employees

7 traveling from outside the borough, the project team intends to name the scheme "mega car pool".
System Benefits:-
The perceived benefits, post implementation of the method, is expected to include the following
Ability to track and inform the nearest car driver of vehicle requests from prospective car pool member based on the distance from the Commuter
Ability to track the boarding and alighting of passengers through swipe of a card and bill them using the GPS distance with least margin of error
Ability to create permanent routes and assign passengers who use the cars daily or add passengers based upon calls received
Ability to create, track the usage and forward the required information for proportional compensation of car pool members.
The requirements of the method of mega car pool management for vehicle tracking and service is sought to be met by:
1. Installation of a GPS based Online Automatic Vehicle Location (AVL)
device in each vehicle called the Vehicle Mounted Unit (VMU) to track distance traveled and monitor the location
Installation of a Proximity Contact Less Card reader to track boarding and alighting of members.
Installation of the necessary software and maps at the control room servers for monitoring the vehicle.
Installing necessary software to create member cards, track the swipes and forward the card usage by car pool members.
Noveltv:-
Applicants believe that the invented method and system is novel and inventive, because there is no prior art known to them which discloses or suggests control and management of a car pool by GPS and GPRS technology and provision of smart cards to record individual usage of car pool members as disclosed hereunder.
Objects Of The Invention:-
An object of the invention is to provide centralized management of mega car pool with continuous tracking of all the vehicles of the pool.
Another object of the invention is to make the car pool safe for all the members through verification of each member.
A further object of the invention is to provide compensation to any member not using the car pool upto his final destination.
Yet another object of the invention is to enable can-owner as well as non car-owners to avail of the car pool.

A still further objective of the invention is to provide relief to the traffic congestion in a metropolitan area.
Another object of the invention is to reduce usage of individual transport, thereby helping the cause of environment.
Brief Description Of Accompanying Drawinas:-
Fig.l gives an overview of the system for car pool management according to the
invention. Fig.2 shows the function of the control room/call centre of the system. Fig.3 shows the functional responsibility of the persons implementing the scheme.
The invention will now be described in detail as depicted in the accompanying drawings in an exemplary embodiment. However, there may be other embodiments of the same invention, all of which are deemed covered by this description.
Description Of The Invention:-
Congestion is the most important problem in many regions. We are seeing year after year more traffic, more pollution, more accidents, more lost time, more unnecessary deficits.
An important social role played by public transport is to ensure that all members of society are able to travel, not just those with a driving license and access to an automobile—which include groups such as the young, the old, the poor, many medical conditions or people banned from driving. Automobile dependency is a name given by policy makers to places where those without access to a private vehicle do not have access to independent mobility.
The proposed Mega carpool harnesses the power of people for their collective as well as individual benefit. At the present technology levels, it may work as follows in the case of major metropolitan areas.
• All car owners of the area desirous of availing a carpool are enrolled as members in a .* Mega Carpool' (MCP), subject to due verification of their credentials. Help of employers/RWAs/police authorities/documentary evidence/attestation by reputed persons is taken to establish credentials.

All the verified members are issued smart card based Photo IDs, which also work as a credit/debit card to record mileage points (described later).
Cars of all the members are fitted with a 'contact less' Card Reader which can (i) read the Smart Card based Photo ID of a member, (ii) sense location of the car and (iii) transmit this data digitally (with the aid of cell phone/trunk radio service providers) to a Central Agency.
'A;, a member of the Mega Carpool may give ride to any of the member(s) of Mega Carpool who have common/along-the-way travel destination. By giving rides, 7\' earns mileage points at a predetermined rate.

In return, 'A' may use points earned to avail rides from any of the Mega Carpool member cars and thus save fuel and vehicle maintenance costs.
The points accrued to 'A' can be also used by a family member who holds an 'Add-on' membership card. This way, 'A' may have only one
car in the family, but other family member(s) can also enjoy car rides in any of the Mega Carpool member cars.
The entire arrangement is voluntary and 'A' is free to not give/avail rides on days he/she so wishes.
A Mega car pool registers and matches members' travel plans and sets up various members with one another through phone/SMS/internet, on a dynamic basis with the help of computer software.
The-Mega car pool also keeps account of mileage points earned and used by all members. All Mega Carpool rides are fully logged for enhancing security and for keeping track of mileage points earned/used, as described below:
♦ As soon as a member 'A' takes a ride in the car of a member 'B', he shows his membership card to the Card Reader installed in the car of 'B'. The machine reads the Id. No. of A, the time of start of journey and the location of start of journey (the location is sensed by the machine gives a beep sound (or any other suitable indication) to indicate successful completion of this
transaction. This ensures the genuineness of both A and 'B' and logs the journey for safety and accounting purposes.
♦ On arrival at his destination, 'A' again shows his card to the Card Reader, and the card reader transmits a message to Central agency to mark location and time of end of journey. The Central agency's computer thus has complete record of journey, for enhanced safety and security of members and for computing mileage points. Based on kilometers traveled, the Central agency's computer credits 'B' and debits 'A' for the Mega Carpool ride.
• All members are sent-a monthly electronic/paper statement giving a
summary of points earned, points used, balance points available, and
emissions saved by the member during the month by participating in
Mega Carpool.
This system allows the Car Pool Administration team to:
Locate Cars at any given time
Track the car pool member entry and exit time and distance traveled
% • Assign the nearest car to any car pool member on request
Inform the car owners about the daily usage statistics
Provide an Internet View to registered individual members in this transit system on their own usage statistics
The primary purpose of this software and hardware combination is to make the car pool paperless and efficient by making use of cars and reducing the vehicles on road. A control room / call center is set up to monitor this and take requests from the commuters. A generic relationship and role diagram is depicted in Fig. 2.
Technical Requirements:
The Mega Car Pool or MCP requires a Global Positioning System(GPS) + Group Packet Radio Services (GPRS) solution which is robust and dependable.
A system based on GPS which can calculate its location and also send it to central control room.
The VMU needs to be economically designed and packed neatly in a usable and functional form with proper display of status lights. No cutting of wires should be required for its installation.
Fig. 1 illustrates this system arrangement.
The overall system is designed in such a way that any query made to the
system will give a response within 20 sec (Max) at peak load of vehicles and 10 call centre executives logged in to the system at any given point in time.
MCP uses application software which has been tried, tested and proven and then customizes it according to the specifications. Using the Customer Requirements Specification, the entire control room software is built in a customized way to deliver the results speedily.
The System has the following features that meet the requirements
A Fleet management panel to enter vehicle data, documentation data and other normal use cases
A tracking panel, which is used to track vehicles, creates a trip for a vehicle, close a trip for a vehicle and in general ensure vehicle schedule adherence. A link from this panel opens the vehicle tracking view, which is both text based and Map based. One can see the vehicle move on the map. A number of reports are provided
• Daily vehicle movement reports in terms of the road, district, and place at periodic intervals. The tracking interval for each vehicle can be set between 30 seconds to 1 min.

Trip wise reports
Vehicle Stoppage exception reports
Vehicle over speed exception reports

Geographical Information Services(GIS) search tool, which allows you to search the nearest vehicle from a known location
Swipe tracking tool to get the passenger entry and exit points thereby calculating the distance
Map viewer tools, which show a vehicle "position on a map
• Control Room
The Control room should have a good Virtual Private Network (VPN) connection
to the transaction servers. Call center software to take commuter calls is
desirable.
Each tracker/ dispatcher will have a soft phone connection. This is the nerve
center of the entire system from an operation point of view.
The set of user roles for Car pool which will set as basis for designing of different

application modules is explained as below.

(TABLE REMOVED)

• Setting up the Fleet
The Car Pool Admin team creates a group of cars on fixed routes to densely populated offices. This may also be created based on predefined and specific demand by registered users. To do this the Fleet Manager Application Module is used.

• Commuter / Member Addition
Commuters will have to be registered online using SECURE HTTPS methodology which is a known technology. They provide the detailed information, which is verified by the Car Pool Administration and then activated. Upon Successful activation, a personalized Smartcard is dispatched to the commuter. After this, he/she is able to use the car pool system.
• Trip Request
* A Commuter may request a scheduled Shared Trip by calling the control room and providing his boarding and destination details. Alternately he may SMS the request by sending predefined requests
• Trip Assignment and Tracking Car movement
Car owners bid and take the routes and trips and fix their cars with track devices. Members who want to be a part of this system register and get a membership card. They can then avail the car service on a daily basis or call for the car service whenever they want on pre-designated routes.
The dispatcher sees the track panel of the module to quickly find out the car in the route. The same panel is used to track whether the car is as per schedule. The Global Positioning System provides the precise location of the car at any point in time.
• Tracking Commuter Movement
When the member enters the car and swipes his/her card his geographical location as given by the Global Position System built into the device is captured and logged in to the system. When they alight the same happens.
These are used to calculate the distance travelled by the member in each ride.

(TABLE REMOVED)

• Compensating the Vehicle Owners
For every trip that is generated, customer pick up and customer alighting information is used to generate a distance metric for the car. This distance metric is accumulated per day and per month. Then using an agreed methodology the compensation is worked out per car either bi-weekly or monthly.
BENEFITS FOR USERS:
Participants have to be members of the system, and are 'pre-screened' for safety purposes. Technology is used to identify riders and vehicles in the system, and participation is tracked so that valuable 'ride credits' can be transferred between riders and drivers. A flexible carpooling implementation involves establishing a route and signing up members for that route. Each day members can decide to participate or not, can then decide to be a driver or rider, can show up when they are ready, and can change their mind about all of the above without having to tell anyone.
Mega Car Pool Feature
• All member cars to be fitted with Global Positioning System (G.P.S) +
Group Packet Radio Service (G.P.R.S) System.

SMS intimations before reaching the source.
Panic button for members i.e. immobilization in case of emergency.
In case of break down drops provided by back up vehicles
User+Call Centre traceable cars.
Free wind screen and rear screen U.V. resistance sun shield
Car occupancy status indicator.
Free First aid Services.
Free repair and flat tyre replacement.
Benefits Of The Invention:
Saving in fuel
Capacity utilization of cars.
Reduced vehicular pollution (benefits local citizens).
Reduced Green House Gas emissions (8 lakh tons) (benefits globally)
Reduced driving stress/road rage
Higher traffic speed (benefits all road users, not just cars
Reduced investment requirements in transport infrastructure
Reduced parking space demand (benefits all businesses).
Social/ business networking opportunity.
Carbon credits (Rs.lOO crores)
The method and system according to the present invention can also be applied to mega car pools on a National level, which offer long distance journey matching.

We Claim:-
1. A system of mega car pool management comprising of:
a fleet management panel to enter vehicle data and documentation data;
a tracking panel to track vehicles with facility to offer vehicle tracking view which is text and map based;
GPS based online Automatic Vehicle Location (AVL) device in Vehicle Mounted Unit (VMU) installed in each vehicle;
Proximity Contactless Card Reader installed in each vehicle to track .boarding and alighting of members;
- a control room having application and transaction servers and a
plurality of networked computers,
wherein the transit data from the VMU is fed to the said application server over GSM network and GPRS communication, characterized in that the system can locate any vehicle at any time, track and record car pool usage by any member for every trip and inform car owners about the daily usage statistics.

The system as claimed in claim 1, wherein the said control room has a good VPN connection to the transaction server and is equipped to take commuter calls.
The system as claimed in claiml, wherein the tracking interval for every vehicle can be set between 30 seconds and 1 minute.
The system as claimed in claim 1, wherein trip-wise reports, vehicle stoppage and over speed reports can be generated.

The-system as claimed in claim 1,wherein the'nearest vehicle can be located from a known location of a commuter.
A method of mega car pool management comprising the steps of:
- receiving request for registration from prospective members;
verification of the credentials of each prospective member and issuing smart card based photo ID cards upon successful verification;
registering and then matching individual member's travel plan;
- setting up various members with one another through
phone/sms/internet on a dynamic basis;
swiping of the smart card at the card reader in the vehicle by each member upon entry and exit to the vehicle to record beginning and end of journey by said member and
recording all such transactions and computing mileage points earned or used by each member,
characterized in that the method achieves most economical and optimum utilization of the vehicles which leads to reduced vehicular pollution and congestion, saving in fuel and cost of personal transportation while ensuring personal safety of all members.
The method as claimed in claim 6, wherein it is implemented by the system as claimed in claims 1-5.
The method as claimed in claim 6, wherein the nearest vehicle to a commuter sending a request to the control room can be deployed.
The method as claimed in claim 7, wherein the car pool is safe for children, women and the physically handicapped.