Mobile Position and Status Reports

Land mobiles, and “amphibious mobiles” - cargos that move over marine and terrestrial transportation links - may be monitored and tracked from a control base, in the same way as marine mobiles. If you own machinery, trucks, trains, stations or other types of vehicles, you can now follow their displacements, working hours, operating zones and speeds, - and sophisticated applications calculating the productivity of “remote assets” - with no need to be physically on the spot.

Two critical steps to location and monitoring:

1. GPS & “computing space” – located on the mobile, determines where the mobile is and performs sensor readings, logical analyses and report preparation. Receives operator communications messages for transmission to Control, and messages from Control.

2. Communications to / from base – The above functions are only as strong as the ability to communicate the data and messages to (and from) the Control Center. Marimsys uses purely ORBCOMM satellite links for high reliability and inexpensive communications ANYWHERE on Earth. Imagine a truck pushing a “Need mechanical assistance” button in a remote area; when the truck is only equipped with cellular telephony messaging – and there is no cellular tower within range – the message will NEVER get out.

Marimsys and ORBCOMM have solutions which can break free of “comms backbone” limitations. As such these systems are not reliant upon waiting for the mobile to come within range of a TX/RX tower and can bring a new level of real time or near real time functionality into mobile communications.

Questions can be answered such as the following:

• Where are the mobiles now?
• What are they doing at this moment?
• How many hours have They been working?
• Where, and for how long have they remained stopped?
• What explanation is there for going off-route?
• What work was performed in the last 3 hours?

When we add the two-way communications capability of Marimsys & ORBCOMM data and messaging, INTERCHANGES between Control and the Mobile become possible such as the coordination of:

• Change in destination.
• Bridge is out, take alternative route.
• Client reports urgent need for delivery.

Marimsys and ORBCOMM assists in JIT planning.

Setup of a Road grader

The first step is identification of the vehicle, some data on the owner, the identification of the distinctive color which will represent the track of that mobile, data on the type of vehicle and a photograph.

Basic Positioning

Now we can see the position of the mobile on a chart of the zone of operation, in this case South of Santiago, Chile. As in the case of all our products, the software has a great number of graphic and visualizing tools, such as to obtain an enlarged view (zoom), as shown in the illustration:

The track covered by the mobile can be displayed on a chart:

Or a tabular report can be obtained on the positions, times and dates of movements, or solely of movements outside the designated and “geofenced” work area.

We have been through the “basics of positioning” now, with the computing capacity of the satellite communicator and Marimsys software; and the “from anywhere” communications capability of ORBCOMM – we can begin to operate the road grader working up in the mountains, far from the “comms backbone” in a significantly more efficient manner.

In our opinion, the provision of “more positioning” is not a service adding significant value to operations. For the achievement of breakthrough productivity improvements we must create more sophisticated metrics of remote equipment.

For more advanced examples of location based technology see:

• More precise calculation and delivery of maintenance services
• Specific sensors for particular uses
• Marimsys Remote Productivity System
• Remote Measurement of Operator Productivity
• Real time project completion estimates.