How The Internet Of Things Is Benefitting The Transportation Sector?

By Sanjeev Verma

The Internet of Things is transforming traditional trading by providing innovative techniques for quicker and safe transportation. Every transportation mode whether road, rail, ship, or air is availing huge benefits with the help of IoT-based methods for delivery services.

Each layer of the transportation sector now includes improved communication, smart management, and data distribution systems that help users track their products faster. Use of IoT offers connectivity among the assets via embedded sensors, gateways, routers, and many other devices that help collect real-time data. This improves the decision-making trends for the authorities, allowing a safer and quick goods transportation as well as passenger journeys.

IoT Applications and their benefits

Analysts have predicted that by the year 2030 nobody would prefer a personal car in the US. Instead, people are opting for self-driven, electric vehicles for a safer commute, and also it is environmentally feasible. This data prediction is offering the Internet of Things with multiple opportunities to serve in the transportation sector.

Technology is benefitting the consumers by transforming their daily commuting habits to smarter decisions and, is thus, playing a major part in evolving an advanced and smarter society. Installing an IoT-based system for your vehicles not only provides predictive routes but also ensures the safety of your vehicle in the congested areas. IoT is inclusive of all connected assets and futuristically, every vehicle automatically connects to the cars, in its particular range that provides valuable data for minimized accidental risks.

Here are some of the IoT applications in the current trend along with their benefits.

Vehicle Maintenance

Most of the owners find it difficult to keep a check on every small part of their vehicles and detailed information can be fetched with the help of IoT technology in a time-consuming way. Maintaining a vehicle for long-term use is a must to run a transportation business. Therefore, the Internet of Things provides many such solutions that can be beneficial for the logistics department. IoT enables proper management of the vehicle through sensor-based technology, fetches the vehicle's information, and displays it on the connected platform (a smartphone). This information comprises the amount of load your vehicle is carrying, the pressure exerted on the vehicle's tire, location history, real-time alerts on the service delivery, etc.

Traffic Management

 It is a challenging task even for the traffic policeman to take control of the never-ending traffic. Majority of the drivers possess unpredictable driving habits that might result in any unwanted situation. In order to avoid such scenarios, IoT facilitates automation for proper management. Anticipating a society with fully-automated cars is a smarter move towards curbing the traffic. A sensor-enabled vehicle would automatically communicate with the surrounding vehicles to avoid the risk of road accidents. There are different kinds of sensors that can be used for various applications in the transportation sector. It would ease out the traffic flow as compared to the traditional stop-and-go process.

Route Optimization

Gone are the traditional ways of making your drivers understand the route verbally to proceed with your service deliveries. Even while using personal vehicles, we would ask for the routes to the nearby people, which would consume a lot of time and efforts. IoT has made travelling easier and advanced with its dynamic mapping applications. A GPS-enabled vehicle provides detailed information about the route on which you are travelling and predicts the way towards your destination much before you start your journey. This technological advancement is helping the transportation sector by facilitating them with clearer and accurate routes. Even when the driver takes a wrong turn by mistake, the IoT-enabled GPS optimizes the routes with all the available options to follow through.

Geo-fencing

It is one of the advanced methods that help determine the track of the vehicle i.e. if your vehicle is going off-route or away from the specified track, an alert would appear on your connected device. A geo-fence is like a virtual circumference that helps track the exact location of your industrial vehicles. This method allows you to configure a real geographical area to get alerts about the vehicles entering and exiting the networking radius. Also, geo-fencing proves beneficial in smart inventory management by keeping the small essentials safe within the vicinity of the industry.

Fuel Level Monitoring

Monitoring the fuel levels of your vehicles helps predict the performance estimation and the distance it would cover. You can now monitor the fuel levels inside the tanks remotely and get the real-time alerts. On a bigger level, when fuel or oil is transported, it becomes a necessity for the logistics department to keep a check on the driving habits of the drivers. Also, they need to ensure that no fuel/oil thefts take place during the journey. In these cases, a fuel level monitoring solution plays a major role in keeping a track of the transported fuel. So, we can say that fuel level monitoring not only benefits the transportation sector by providing real-time alerts of the vehicle’s fuel needs but also ensures the safety of the oil being transported.

Cargo Monitoring

The advent of IoT has revealed a broader side in the transportation sector. Trading of the goods is majorly performed in huge cargos and containers, which can be difficult to manage manually. There are different types of cargos in which a product is transported from one corner to the other and many factors describe the health of one cargo such as temperature, pressure, level, communication, size, and load. All these factors can be customized as per the requirements of the product being transported. A IoT based cargo monitoring solution works with the help of sensors and gateways through which the authorities can extract the data and keep a computerized control. This solution helps provide a smart way to carry out shipping operations and also eliminates the need for excess human labour.

Safety and Reliability

Data collected through the sensor devices is stored on a secured cloud platform, from which the authorities extract the necessary data for analysis. It is quite a doubt whether the connected assets are safe under such a large network. Indeed, IoT devices are dramatically impacting our daily work schedule and we cannot look upon our future without the use of these devices. IoT applications in transportation provide safe data storage and reliable data usage for better decision-making.

Lastly, the transportation industry is one of the largest industries and implementing an IoT solution with this industry would enhance the overall industrial productivity. Owning a business in the transportation sector is a very complex job, but technologies like the Internet of Things are here to help you manage any difficulty. IoT offers brilliant asset connectivity and it is one of the finest ways to keep your business young and running amidst the competition.

Sanjeev Verma is the founder and CEO of Biz4Group, based out of Orlando, FL the United States. He has conceptualized the idea of Biz4 Brand and founded Biz4Group, and Biz4Intellia. He has 20+ years of experience in boosting IT-based start-ups to success. In the past, he has worked on leadership positions with Marriott Vacations, Disney, MasterCard, Statefarm, and Oracle. The company headed by him excels in developing, implementing and monitoring Digital Solutions ranging from IoT solutions & products, Mobile and Web Development, and Digital Marketing to Full Stack Development and CMS solutions.