The Tata SkoolMan Telematics service which is aimed at ensuring safety of children and convenience for parents and schools have been introduced. The service will keep track of the school buses on real-time basis and will come as a standard fitment in the Tata Ultra range of school buses.
The telematics based tracking solution will also be available as an after-market option for other school bus models in Tata’s portfolio. The ‘Tata Ultra BS3 Safe School Bus’ equipped with the SkoolMan has been showcased at the SIAM Bus & Special Vehicle Show 2015 (BSVS) which was held at the India Expo Mart in Noida.
The technology enables the parents to monitor their ward’s school bus. The arrival and departure will be notified through SMS in addition to live tracking on a map or mobile application. It also doubles up as an effective fleet management tool for the operators to plan the routes.
The schools can monitor their buses through the fleet management system which is updated every 10 seconds. To ensure the safety of the children, the system will keep the school informed about instances of unsafe driving through SMS or email notifications. All data transaction are secured from unauthorized access by the 256 bit AES data encryption technique.
Further, the schools can exercise what is termed as ‘Geo Fencing’ to restrict the buses from entering zones which are deemed to be unsafe for the children. The company also claims that the fleet operators can reduce the fuel consumption and hence the carbon footprint by using the ‘engine-Idling monitoring’ facility of the SkoolMan.
Tata Motors has also been conducting programs like ‘Hamare Bus Ki Baat Hai’ and ‘Dream it to win it’ to familiarize and train all the involved parties on aspects of school children safety.
The Tata SkookMan Telematics service addresses the anxiety of the parents regarding their children’s well being during daily commutes by keeping a close tab on the activities of the drivers.
Tata also showcased other passenger commercial vehicle models at the SIAM show including the 1512 Luxury Bus, Articulated City Bus, Winger Dicor BS4, Ultra Midi 900 mm AC Bus and Ultra BS4 AC Bus with 3-litre engine. The firm also recently inducted a fleet of AC city buses with automatic transmission in Ahmadabad.