EBSF

The network called "STRAV" (Société de Transport Automobile de Voyageurs) is localized at Brunoy, near Paris. Brunoy is a commune in the south-eastern suburbs of Paris, France. From the centre of Paris, Brunoy is located at 20.6 km (12.8 mi) and counts around 26,000 inhabitants.

STRAV is an urban operator between two departments in the south of Paris and it is a Veolia Transport subsidiary. It owns 152 vehicles spread 22 lines and 350 bus stations. The network enables to serve 190,000 inhabitants and it has in average one breakdown per month on each bus during its route.

Additionally to the troubles that cause to passengers bus breakdowns during the operations, they are source of huge expenses for the operator: costs of the immobilization and replacement of the vehicle, costs of the additional buses required to ensure a normal exploitation, maintenance and reparations costs...

Use Case Objectives

Optimizing telediagnostics and remote maintenance systems are part of the objectives addressed by EBSF. In Brunoy, the partners are testing innovative tools to improve predictive diagnostics and therefore anticipate breakdowns or reduce intervention time.

From a more practical point of view, the developed system for boarding and the supplement used for analyzing the ground allow to follow better the solicitations and constraints that the vehicles might encounter. Thus favoring a preventive maintenance, by anticipating the repairs that need to be done and so managing the break-downs.

In addition, the new Telediagnostic system increases the safety of the users and the drivers, as well as the acceptance of the buses as a mean of transportation

Description of the work

The experiment will take place on the J line, which is the main line of the STRAV network, in the commune of Brunoy. The line connects passengers to RER A and RER D, which are main public transport train lines, taking them to Paris. This line has also a specific topographical profile (slopes) and is subject to important traffic conditions. It provides a huge range of operation conditions in particular for the three key components monitored by the telediagnostic and predictive maintenance system

The innovative EBSF Telediagnostics system is tested on 10 CITELIS Euro IV vehicles from bus manufacturer IRISBUS. The bus are equipped with a new embedded system based on an innovative technical architecture, allowing some information to be extracted from vehicles' subsystems.

• Step 1: The onboard phase, when data collection takes place

Vehicles have been equipped to collect three sources of vehicle data:

• Multiplex network for vehicle alarms and alerts including dashboard lights;
• Control Area Network (CAN) through the standard interface Bus-FMS2 for intrinsic data;
• Additional specific sensors for three key components, the doors, battery and brake system. These sensors are used to monitor in detail the evolution of key data.

Two communications channels are used to download data to the workshop, depending on their type, priority and critical levels:

• Long-range communication channel: GPRS for critical data like red alarms. Data are downloaded in real time when a red alarm appears;
• Short-range communication channel; WiFi for blackbox data coming from specific sensors and other alerts which are not critical. Data are downloaded when the vehicle comes back to the depot.

All data are synchronised with time, date and GPS localisation information.

•  Step 2: The back-office phase involving predictive diagnostics.

Once the data are collected, all information is transmitted to the workshop, where it is analysed using specialised advanced algorithms. Data is available for consultation on a website and can be requested according to different parameters (bus number, time period, type of alert, etc).Moreover, alarms, alerts and events are associated with a map, which allows events to be correlated with the line.

Furthermore, specific software related to the three key components (doors, brake system and battery) is being developed for predictive maintenance purposes. The objective is to anticipate the technical failures and associated serious fallouts like technical failures during the service. This specific software is based on advanced algorithms developed using data fusion, sampling and signal processing.

The global technical architecture of the telediagnostic system tested in the Brunoy Use Case is integrated and compliant with the EBSF telematic architecture which has been developed by twenty-two partners of the project and has been validated on a testbench. This architecture is based on existing standards at interface and communication protocol levels.