Web-Based Vehicle Remote Access and Its Application to In-Vehicle Network Integrated Fleet Management

The demands for effective and efficient management of commercial vehicles and freight transport have led to the increasing needs for sophisticated fleet management systems (FMS) for reducing the operation cost of commercial vehicle operation, improving custom service and asset management as well as maintaining the safety and security. The availability and declining costs of telecommunications and information technologies afford opportunities for using real-time information to achieve these targets and the emergence of internet technology make it possible to transfer updated real-time information through more widely available communication media.

This paper introduces the web-based remote-access concept for the real-time information acquisition, which has been used to enhance functionality of a dynamic fleet management system. When integrated with in-vehicle network, the information from other intelligent transport system (ITS) devices, along with vehicle electronic control modules, can be made available for a web-based remote fleet management system of vehicle fleet. The structure of an intelligent event engine has been proposed on the vehicle-side for monitoring and controlling of vehicle operations through the combination of web-based communication media and vehicle network technology. The implementation of the proposed method on a Truck System Concept Verifier has been used to demonstrate feasibility of the web-based remote access to enhance functionality of a dynamic FMS.