The need to track the locations of bicycles in an Automatic Bicycle Rental System presents several challenges for control, communication, power management, reliability, and security. This paper proposes an effective bicycle-tracking system to ensure the above challenges.
The Automatic Bicycle Rental System (ABRS) is a senior engineering design project at………………. This project requires the collaboration of Mechanical, Computer, and Electrical engineering students to research, design, and build the system. This allows college community to rent a bicycle using their student ID or email address with appropriate authentication. As a part of ABRS, a bicycle-tracking module was implemented with consideration for cost and integration with the other computer and mechanical systems.
The bicycle-tracking module allows ABRS administrators to view the current location of every bicycle that is part of the system. This requires mounting a tracking module on each bicycle. That tracking module must be able to determine its current location and communicate with the bicycle rack and with the ABRS backend server. The backend server is a web application hosted on a cloud-based provider. ABRS administrator can control the system through the backend server. Communications and Authentication, System Control and Tracking, and Power Supply and Management were considered during the design and implementation process. Following student outcomes were assessed:
• Identifies a well-defined engineering problem statement motivated by real-world problems and issues.
• An ability to design a system, component, or process to meet desired needs within realistic constraints.
Kala Meah received the B.Sc. degree from Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology in 1998, the M.Sc. degree from South Dakota State University in 2003, and the Ph.D. degree from the University of Wyoming in 2007, all in Electrical Engineering. From 1998 to 2000, he worked for several power companies in Bangladesh. Currently, Dr. Meah is an Associate Professor in the Electrical and Computer Engineering program, Department of Engineering and Computer Science, York College of Pennsylvania, York, PA, USA. His research interest includes electrical power, HVDC transmission, renewable energy, energy conversion, and engineering education.
James Moscola is an Associate Professor of Computer Science and Computer Engineering at York College of Pennsylvania. He received a B.S. in Physical Science from Muhlenberg College in 2000, a B.S. in Computer Engineering, a M.S. in Computer Science, and
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