Applications

Fleet Management amalgamates the three-tier technologies in transportation, information, and communications. An IT system for enterprises tracking and recording their fleets and drivers with real-time information of vehicle location, driving route, vehicle status, driver behaviors, etc. The fleet management system consists of many functions such as vehicle surveillance, tasking management, driver management, fleet analysis, driving safety management, predictive maintenance, and remote diagnostics. The fleet management system can allow enterprises to lower and avoid risks in vehicle investment while raising commercial efficiency and productivity and reducing the overall transportation time and staffing needs.

The fleet management system transmits GPS positioning, vehicle information such as car speed, engine rev-counts, fuel consumption, water temperature, voltage, driving routes, and real-time surveillance footages to the back-end servers through the mobile network facilitated by the onboard computer, as the management platform is integrated with GIS digital maps to allow the managers to monitor vehicle status and location through PCs or mobile devices. So, to strengthen driving safety, apart from the navigation system, the fleet management system often integrates with dashcams, tire-pressure sensors, auxiliary vision system, On-Board Diagnostic (OBD), and Advanced Driver Assistance System (ADAS). Furthermore, the managing subjects of fleet management are not just vehicles, but drivers and the goods and passengers these monitored vehicles deliver; therefore, customized peripherals such as alcohol detectors, access registrators, barcode machines, temperature, and door sensors can be installed to suit enterprise needs.

As the development of fleet management systems has started early on, its products are relatively mature. Some logistics vehicles even have their own IoT technologies, such as the temperature sensors installed for vehicles with refrigeration and freezer capacities. The temperature data is transmitted to the drivers, to the monitor alerts and to the goods-receiving parties as part of the products’ traceability data. Sensors installed in brakes, accelerators, and tires can also deliver alerts to ensure driving safety and driver behavior integrity.

With the integration of IoT and AI technologies complemented by cloud computing applications, fleet management is not merely managing passive operations like position reporting, vehicle diagnostics, and driver behaviors. It’s now trending towards developing active smart-fleet management with access to real-time transportation and goods data while actively managing driver behaviors to minimize transportation risks. Quality and efficiency can be analyzed through all-round management by big-data. Start-to-Finish visualization is an outstanding feature in the active fleet management system, as all types of AIoT sensors collect real-time data and feedback immediately through AI dynamic image recognition technology. This actively recognizes driver behaviors in real-time, currently focusing on auditing infringements and, in the future, imposing preventive measures to ensure driving safety.

Active Fleet Management

An active fleet management system includes GPS trackers, car-use HMI, car-use IoT Gateway, surveillance recording device, back-end management platform, and all types of sensors; or features in-vehicle PCs, usually Compact PCs/Box PCs in providing a variety of functions. The users and environment of fleet management systems are dramatically different from those of the typical IT systems. The fact that most users of car fleet management systems are drivers who are less experienced with working with IT equipment, gives rise to the requirement to have an intuitive operating interface. As the environment for the installed fleet management system is a more harsh environment with a high level of vibration and high temperature, all in-vehicle hardware should be of industrial-class standard.

Before factory exit, all SSDs produced by Solid State Storage Technology Corporation go through the reliability testing above the industry standard with the highest-class NEOSEM testing equipment, and extreme temperature tolerance tests to meet the requirements for industrial grade applications. Fleet management system deploys SSDs produced by Solid State Storage Technology Corporation comply with the Anti-Vibration standard of the US military-grade standard, MIL-STD-810G, and Anti-Shock standards of the US military-grade standard, MIL-STD-202G and MIL-STD-883 without concerns for vibrations or shock encountered on the road.

As “real-time” is an all-important stand-out feature in active fleet management, real-time transmission, response, and surveillance render data transmission and computing speed the quintessential aspect of the active fleet management system. The read-write speed of the PCIe® 4.0 NVMe^TM SSDs produced by Solid State Storage Technology Corporation is sixty-eight times faster than that of the conventional HDDs, and even that of the SATA SSDs is five times faster and above, which are suitable for the fleet management system with video surveillance function that requires real-time storage and footage transmission while the SSDs increase file storage efficiency.

If a vehicle has to wait long for the in-vehicle PCs start-up before it can be put on the road, it will be time consuming and high fuel/electricity consumption in the long run. Not to mention the entire fleet. As enterprises introduce fleet management to optimize operational efficiency and lower operating costs, the PCIe® 4.0 NVMeTM SSDs produced by Solid State Storage Technology Corporation with high read-write speed effectively optimize the operating start-up time of the in-vehicle PCs immediately following the vehicle start-up.