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MIT team’s school-bus algorithm could save $5M and 1M bus miles

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Re: MIT team’s school-bus algorithm could save $5M and 1M bus miles

#51

Post by bluGill »

goodcanadian wrote: post #47
trendia wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another example: a lot of rural areas have patches of gravel roads. It's not obvious from Google maps where the roads go from paved to gravel (and they sometimes do it in random sections). Naively looking at a map, you'd think a roundabout route had potential to be shorter, but not realize the road was gravel.

In rural areas, school buses drive on gravel. Where I grew up, the buses were speed limited by law, so the speed on gravel is often the same as on the highway. Road surface might not matter as much as you think.

In rural areas there are a lot of minimum maintenance roads. Legally they are roads and you can drive on them all you want. However if you don't have 4 wheel drive you shouldn't drive on them, even with 4 wheel drive there are times when you won't make it. A bus should never drive on these roads, and google does not know which these roads are - as I've discovered when I had to rescue someone who blindly followed google maps.

Re: MIT team’s school-bus algorithm could save $5M and 1M bus miles

#52

Post by bluGill »

TAForObvReasons wrote: post #49
losteverything wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But to an idiot like me, the absolute amount should go down if it is a cut; not up! So if i spent $500 eating lunch at work two years ago; $600 last year and plan/allocated $610 this year i had a "budget cut?" no. I spent more. Thats how i think

Think of the budget as a multi-year allocation. If Budget A from 2 years ago was "$500 this year, $600 next year, $700 the year after that" and now you reduce the allocation to $610, that is a budget cut from the original Budget A.

Only if the budget was reasonable in the first place. All too often they "budget" far more money than is possible and then celebrate the cuts.

Re: MIT team’s school-bus algorithm could save $5M and 1M bus miles

#53

Post by bluGill »

towndrunk wrote: post #30
jasoninprivate wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't speak on behalf of everyone, but my mother has been a school bus driver for the past 20 years. I'm not so sure I would consider the runs short. She drives at least 8 hours a day, with a break in the middle. There isn't much extra space in her bus for batteries. In addition, the lifetime of a bus isn't measured in the same way cars are. They are purchased once a decade, never retrofitted, and not every bus is…

I was thinking underneath the bus was the perfect space for battery packs. Once you remove the gas tank and exhaust etc there would be plenty of room.

You need to add a much strong suspension system as well, that implies more wheels.

I'm not saying it can't be done, just that it is harder than it looks.

Re: MIT team’s school-bus algorithm could save $5M and 1M bus miles

#54

Post by chrisbennet »

abhi3 wrote: post #37
chrisbennet wrote: post #10

Since this forum for founder/entrepreneur types, let me inject a bit of caution from my own experience with dealing with government organizations: If you save a business organization money, they appreciate it. If you save a government organization money, the next year the "savings" is likely to be deducted from their budget. They don't get to benefit from the savings and thus their motivations aren't what you might e…

Uhmm. Saving money doesn't mean they have to give it back you know. They could spend on other things like better computers for kids, more staff etc.

As I understand it (and I could be wrong), next year's budget uses last years budget as a baseline. If you spent $20K less on school books for example, you'd probably get $20K less for books next year. If instead you spent the same, but got 20% more books for the same money, that might work.

There is also this practice in organizations where money is allocated in "pots"[1]. For example, there is probably a pot for hardware/computers and a different pot for software. If you save them money on hardware, they don't automatically get to spend the savings on software.

(I thought you were unfairly down-voted so I up-voted you.)

[1] The correct term escapes me at the moment.

Re: MIT team’s school-bus algorithm could save $5M and 1M bus miles

#55

Post by abakker »

Govindae wrote: post #45
losteverything wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But to an idiot like me, the absolute amount should go down if it is a cut; not up! So if i spent $500 eating lunch at work two years ago; $600 last year and plan/allocated $610 this year i had a "budget cut?" no. I spent more. Thats how i think

I suppose they should be talking about budget velcoties.

Ah, the mythical budget vector.

Re: MIT team’s school-bus algorithm could save $5M and 1M bus miles

#56

Post by goodcanadian »

bluGill wrote: post #51
goodcanadian wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In rural areas, school buses drive on gravel. Where I grew up, the buses were speed limited by law, so the speed on gravel is often the same as on the highway. Road surface might not matter as much as you think.

In rural areas there are a lot of minimum maintenance roads. Legally they are roads and you can drive on them all you want. However if you don't have 4 wheel drive you shouldn't drive on them, even with 4 wheel drive there are times when you won't make it. A bus should never drive on these roads, and google does not know which these roads are - as I've discovered when I had to rescue someone who blindly followed goog…

Sure, I guess I was trying to comment specifically on gravel. You will need accurate maps for this to work, but I think that is basically a given. A human route planner will also need to have accurate maps.

Re: MIT team’s school-bus algorithm could save $5M and 1M bus miles

#57

Post by dsfyu404ed »

ztakeo wrote: post #39
towndrunk wrote: post #8

Kind of off topic but... why is no one converting school buses to electric? Seems like a perfect opportunity. Lots of space for batteries. High torque. Short runs in the morning and afternoon. Think of how many diesel school busses there are across just the USA every morning.

Not sure if by "converting" you mean retrofitting old buses or replacing diesel buses with new electric buses. If it's the former definition, it's non-trivial from a safety and engineering standpoint to integrate a high-voltage, high-energy battery system into an old bus and expect to realize a decent ROI. Those old clunkers are not designed with an electric powertrain nor efficiency (i.e. they're heavy and have have…

Seriously?

While aerodynamic teardrops are most efficient that means nothing if the up front cost is prohibitive.

Also, efficiency and a box that's strong enough to appease the "think of the children" types are very much at odds with each other.

For a bus with low mile requirements some boxes to hold batteries and a big DC motor where the engine goes would work fine.

The "scaled up golf cart" architecture works well if the route does not change and is very cheap to implement.

Re: MIT team’s school-bus algorithm could save $5M and 1M bus miles

#58

Post by robotresearcher »

yedpodtrzitko wrote: post #19

Locked article. So I am just curious - is that a different algorithm than the one with "no turning left" rule which saves money to UPS?

You're curious whether MIT used a well-known algorithm and publicized it as their new invention?

Re: MIT team’s school-bus algorithm could save $5M and 1M bus miles

#59

Post by dsfyu404ed »

bluGill wrote: post #53
towndrunk wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was thinking underneath the bus was the perfect space for battery packs. Once you remove the gas tank and exhaust etc there would be plenty of room.

You need to add a much strong suspension system as well, that implies more wheels. I'm not saying it can't be done, just that it is harder than it looks.

Busses are typically MDT chassis that are spe-d out very lightly and even then they pretty much never run anywhere near their GVW (whereas every other commercial vehicle is near, at or over the GVW basically all the time). A box truck for hauling baked goods is about the only thing that's going to be spec'd out lighter.

An extra few thousand pounds would not be a problem for a full sized school bus.

Re: MIT team’s school-bus algorithm could save $5M and 1M bus miles

#60

Post by adrianmonk »

towndrunk wrote: post #8

Kind of off topic but... why is no one converting school buses to electric? Seems like a perfect opportunity. Lots of space for batteries. High torque. Short runs in the morning and afternoon. Think of how many diesel school busses there are across just the USA every morning.

My guess is risk is part of the answer. They don't have a huge budget, and it could be pretty financially disastrous to them if the experiment fails. And this has worked for them for 50+ years so there's no pressing need to change it.

Also, school districts are in the business of education, not transportation, so they may not see themselves as the people who should be leading in this area. If someone else (transit agency, airport shuttle company, etc.) tries something and proves that it works long term, they may then feel comfortable following along, but as far as I know, that hasn't happened yet because by definition it takes a long time to prove that.

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