WARUC

waruc icon

Washington Road Usage Charge Pilot

UW Information School Capstone 2017

Introducing WARUC iOS

  • Automatic vehicle recognition, pairing, and mileage recording
  • Bluetooth LE connection to minimize battery consumption
  • Trip history view to provide driving validation and analytics to user
  • Location tracking available to those without OBD-II hardware

Washington Road Usage Charge Pilot Project asked for potential solutions to help solve the state transporation infrastructure budget. Our solution is an iOS application that utilizies modern Bluetooth Low Energy technology, our open source OBD-II Bluetooth connection framework, location services, and more to easily connect and record mileage of a vehicle.

Available now in the App Store

ios design stack

Vehicle Onboarding

vehicle onboarding gif

Recording Mileage

driving gif

Vehicle Detection

vehicle detection gif

Application and Tech

OBD-II to iOS Connection

  • Bluetooth Low Energy connection means low battery consumption and quick pairing of devices
  • Mobile device connects automatically when OBD-II presence is detected
  • All iOS devices iPhone 4+ equipped with Bluetooth LE
  • Built first open source framework to establish and maintain connection between OBD-II and iOS devices

Database Connection

  • Built with Firebase (A Google Service);
    Quick, secure, and easy to manage
  • Easy to update ERD and subsequent database
  • Our database was created with scalability and adaptability in mind, allowing for growth and use long after the pilot project

Design Choices

  • Intuitive interface for users to understand the current state of the application
  • With OBD-II there is minimal impact to the users driving experience
  • Extensive help during onboarding process if the user would like assistance allows all users to understand setup

Future Work

While our application meets all of the requirements given to us by our sponsor, we would like to take a moment to address future work that could improve our application:

  • Build a prediciton algorithm to determine the likelihood of an individual missing a trip. From previous trips traveled, it was likely the user would have traveled again today but didn't, in which case, send a notification asking them to turn on their Bluetooth next time they enter their vehicle.
  • Add public and private road classification and detection. This would make the location services option much more valuable than the OBD-II option for many drivers as this would allow them to reduce what they are charged based on where they drive.
  • Build odometer computer vision update, this would be a fail-safe mechanism that would happen or be prompted if the user hasn't recorded any miles traveled in a given time period. In which case, the mileage difference from the first check to the mileage on the odometer would be fully charged.