Fathom, a Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) technology startup, has released its first product: a device designed to discover and locate Bluetooth beacons and Bluetooth-using smartphones or tablets within its vicinity. Virginia’s Blacksburg Transit has piloted the device, known as the Fathom Hub, to identify the locations of transit buses when they are parked in its garage, and thereby better manage the dispatching and maintenance of those vehicles.
Fathom, based in Vancouver, Canada, grew out of RxNetworks, which has provided GPS-based technology for outdoor positioning for the past 10 years. RxNetworks’ solutions include a service that provides location data for Enhanced 911 (e911) calls made via cellphones throughout North America. Fathom represents a foray into indoor location data using BLE technology. The Fathom Hub is intended for use with off-the-shelf beacons, to enable users to manage the locations of their beacons in real time.
Most beacon deployments already in use provide content to an individual’s smartphone, explains Shawn Bouchard, Fathom’s marketing director, based on that user’s location as determined by the beacon transmissions received by his or her devices. However, Bouchard adds, there have been some shortcomings to this use-case of the technology. Beacons that should be stationary may be moved, knocked down or removed, or their batteries may expire. Those deploying a beacon network may be unaware that a problem exists, and smartphone users within the vicinity will thus receive the wrong notifications or information, or none at all when needed.
In addition, beacons could be attached to moving objects, using a Bluetooth receiver (such as a mobile phone or tablet) to track their locations. However, that method works only if the receiver can identify where the transmission is originating.
The Fathom Hub acts as a gateway device that locates beacons in real time. As a beacon emits a unique identifier, the Hub receives those transmissions. The device is shaped like a hexagon, approximately seven inches in width, with antennas built inside that identify changes in the transmissions, thereby approximating the location within about 1 to 3 meters (3.3 to 9.8 feet). The Hub then forwards the data back to a server via an Ethernet cable or Wi-Fi connection.
Blacksburg Transit already had GeLo beacons installed on all 47 of its buses (see Blacksburg Transit Installs Beacons to Boost Ridership, Adjust Service), as well as mounted to signposts at bus stops. The company provided its BT4U mobile app, which employs an app user’s smartphone as a beacon receiver to capture beacon transmissions. The app provided passengers with scheduled arrival times for the buses serving their route, enabling riders to verify that they boarded the correct vehicle. The apps also tracked when a bus reached each bus stop, based on the beacon installed at that stop’s signpost.
However, says Tim Witten, Blacksburg Transit’s manager for intelligent transportation systems (ITS), the transit company removed those beacons from the bus-stop signs in summer 2016, because GeLo had gone out of business and he wanted to save the extra beacons to replace those installed on buses, as required. Meanwhile, he recalls, Blacksburg found another way to use its beacon system: helping its passengers to reclaim items they had inadvertently left behind on a bus. Riders who downloaded the app could use it to determine which bus they took on a day in which they misplaced a scarf, bag or other item. They could then use to app to transmit that information to the lost-and-found services at the transit company, which would then locate that specific vehicle in the storage garage at the end of the day, or contact the driver.
Witten says Blacksburg Transit has been testing the Fathom system to use the same GeLo beacons to locate buses inside the garage, which measures 220 meters by 250 meters (722 feet by 820 feet). The transit company installed 20 Fathom Hubs earlier this year, he reports, and has been testing the system for the past eight months in order to determine how well it could locate a bus within a particular section of the garage.
Dispatching buses is fairly complicated, Witten notes, since different types of buses are sent on different routes, and each must be serviced, cleaned and fueled before going on its route. Drivers arrive on site and need to know where their buses are located, and the vehicles may, at times, not be positioned in a way that makes them easy to access when needed. Blacksburg Transit hopes to use the Fathom solution to provide bus location information to its entire staff. “If there’s an opportunity to make life easier for them,” Witten states, “we want to use it.”
The BLE proximity gateway device that Fathom is offering has been in beta for several years of testing prior to this month’s launch, Bouchard says. Fathom offers the product in three versions. One supports what Bouchard calls “presence mode,” whereby the Hub simply identifies when it reads a beacon transmission, and users thus know that a specific beacon is within that zone. Presence mode is intended to determine proximity versus movement, he explains. It can identify an object’s location, but not with a high degree of accuracy.
Another version operates in “static mode,” with the hub serving as a receiving device for beacon IDs and their locations, so that users can be alerted in the event that a beacon that should be stationary is moved or fails to operate properly. The dynamic mode—the version that Blacksburg is currently using—assumes that beacons move, and the software can be set up to identify every movement and new location of each beacon, as well as send alerts if any move outside of expected perimeters. For instance, the system could issue an alert to a bus company like Blacksburg if a bus were being taken out of the garage before it had gone to the maintenance, washing and fueling stations.
Blacksburg’s pilot went well, Witten says, proving that the hub can effectively identify the locations of buses within a few meters, and the application programming interface (API) enables the transit company to forward that data into its own management software. “Now that we feel we have a working product,” he says, “we’ll start presenting it to our dispatchers” for use by the third quarter of 2017. Following dispatcher use, he intends to provide the technology data to maintenance, fueling and cleaning personnel. Witten hopes the bus staff will be able to use the location data to quickly locate a vehicle if a customer has a lost-and-found request. In addition, he expects the system will enable the staff to identify how buses are parked compared to routing plans for the next day. In that way, he says, bus access should become more efficient for drivers and other employees.
According to Bouchard, companies in manufacturing and infrastructure (rail yards, for instance) are interested in using the Fathom Hub with beacons to track the movements of assets and workers for a variety of use cases. This, he says, includes ensuring that employees remain a safe distance from any potential dangers.