Indian Oil to adopt smart tech to keep an eye on LPG truck drivers

CVTMS, driver status monitoring system for 24,000 such vehicles on contract pan India under consideration of the oil company.

Indian Oil Corporation has decided to keep a close watch with technology on drivers of trucks that move bulk liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) and Indane cylinders for the company across the country to ensure they stay alert on the wheels and drive safely.

Monitoring of the drivers will join its earlier efforts at tracking the movement of trucks that remain crucial to maintaining supplies, from over 35 loading locations, to the more than 100 bottling plants and nearly 13,000 distributors of the company. Keen on having in place an integrated approach, the company is proposing a Centralised Vehicle Tracking and Management System (CVTMS) as well as a Driver Status Monitoring (DSM) system.

From observing the driver’s eye movements and other behaviour using advanced computer vision algorithms and machine learning models, sending out alerts, geo-fencing, determination of Geo-RTD (round trip distance) routes to creating geo-spatial database, there will be several aspects to the proposed mechanism for which the company is inviting bids from firms. It has estimated the value of the work, for five years, to be nearly ₹221 crore.

Vehicle tracking system for LPG trucks are not new with sources among Indane distributors saying while GPS devices were first introduced by some in the trade on their trucks several years ago, the company followed suit by mandating the system for all such vehicles. The trucks are on contract with Indian Oil and belong to the distributors and transporters. All the existing vehicle-mounted units on the trucks will be making way for the systems proposed by the company.

Besides a voice board to send out alerts, the DSM will feature a camera with face detection and identification. The “system should generate alerts on smoking, yawning, distraction, phone calling, closed eyes, no face and unauthorised driver,” Indian Oil said.

The CVTMS will serve as the backbone providing real-time tracking of the trucks and generating real-time alerts, including on harsh braking, sharp manoeuvring, continuous driving, night driving and accidents. Route violations, unauthorised halts and overspeeding will also trigger alerts. Consequently, the system will help generate scorecards and serve as the basis for imposing penalty. The oil company will be mandating the installation of the systems on new trucks that join the fleet.

Indian Oil is looking for a solution robust enough to cater to about 50,000 users comprising its officials, transporters, LPG distributors, industrial customers, retail outlet dealers (for auto LPG) and other stakeholders. “However, the number of concurrent users will not be more than 5,000,” it said.