PINELLAS COUNTY, Fla. — Buses are complex computers on wheels with well over 100 different sensors.
Those sensors are now being read by artificial intelligence at the Pinellas Suncoast Transit Authority.
“This form of technology we’re using is basically a technician on a bus 365, 24/7. Always on, always monitoring the sensors, pulling down data. It can do things and go longer than a typical technician can do,” said Henry Lukasik, Director of Maintenance for PSTA.
PSTA partnered with a company named Preteckt to put AI on approximately 100 buses.
“This is giving a tool for the maintenance teams of PSTA. It's information of what is important so they can actually be in a better position to prioritize what works or what actions need to be taken,” said Krish Inbarajan, CEO of Preteckt.
The AI technology is taking all the information from PSTA buses and comparing it to roughly 2 billion busing and trucking data points across North America to help flag issues.
“There is literally so much data coming from that particular bus. Like literally a million data points per day, per bus. There isn’t enough time in a person’s day to make sense of all that data,” said Inbarajan.
“There’s a lot of benefits to AI. There’s a lot of things that it can do that humans can’t do,” said Lukasik.
Officials said this technology will help the buses be safer, reduce the time it takes to diagnose problems, and increase reliability.
“We feel that the technology will augment our own existing human technicians and allow us to just be more proficient and efficient at diagnosing the buses,” said Lukasik. “Anything that we can do to increase reliability means that we are just that much better in terms of service to our passengers."
PSTA said the technology has been extremely accurate so far and stresses this AI will not replace human technicians.
“What it does and how it helps us is two-fold. One, it works alongside the technicians. So while it’s there looking at the data and telling us what the probable repair could be, the technician is there along with it learning as well,” said Lukasik.
PSTA is open to exploring other emerging technologies in the future.
“This is a prime example of an emerging technology that we tested. We verified that it does work and that it just further augments what we’re doing here already on the human side,” said Lukasik.
“The sky is the limit and we’re always paying attention to what the latest is out there and what it can bring to not only the fleet division but the organization as a whole,” he added.
