Estimating Bus Cross-Sectional Flow Based on Machine Learning Algorithm Combined with Wi-Fi Probe Technology

Abstract

With expansion of city scale, the issue of public transport systems will become prominent. For single-swipe buses, the traditional method of obtaining section passenger flow is to rely on surveillance video identification or manual investigation. This paper adopts a new method: collecting wireless signals from mobile terminals inside and outside the bus by installing six Wi-Fi probes in the bus, and use machine learning algorithms to estimate passenger flow of the bus. Five features of signals were selected, and then the three machine learning algorithms of Random Forest, K-Nearest Neighbor, and Support Vector Machines were used to learn the data laws of signal features. Because the signal strength was affected by the complexity of the environment, a strain function was proposed, which varied with the degree of congestion in the bus. Finally, the error between the average of estimation result and the manual survey was 0.1338. Therefore, the method proposed is suitable for the passenger flow identification of single-swiping buses in small and medium-sized cities, which improves the operational efficiency of buses and reduces the waiting pressure of passengers during the morning and evening rush hours in the future.