Integrated Mobile Application for Fleet Management

Background

A truck driver is expected to cover over a thousand kilometers in an average day, spending around ten hours behind the wheel, and may not come home for weeks. During these long hauls on the road, the truck becomes the driver’s workplace and home all rolled into one. Good cab suspension plays an important part in improving the driver’s experience and providing comfort and convenience.

Client

ContiTech is one of the world’s leading industrial specialists with customers in such key industries as machine and plant engineering, mining, agriculture, and the automotive industry. One of the company’s domain is the damping system for trucks. 

Electronic Air Spring Damping System is a suspension system that makes life on the road – as well as that of fleet managers in the office – much more comfortable and efficient. The eASD modules are equipped with sensors and an electronic control unit. The purely pneumatic system ensures that the damping capacity of the cab adjusts automatically to optimally suit different weights and road conditions in a load-adaptive and frequency-selective manner. 

Challenges

ContiTech approached Symphony Solutions with mobile application development for potential clients – drivers and fleet managers. The purpose of this application is to provide basic functionality for cab controlling for the driver and to utilize the collected road quality data for efficient fleet management. 

Solution 

Symphony Solutions designed a mobile application both for iOS and Android for two different roles – individual driver and fleet manager. 

The application includes basic functions for the driver’s convenience that allows controlling the cab and switch between cab modes for different situations, such as parking, workshop, highway and kneeling mode. 

Leveraging Cloud technologies, the application can collect, store and analyze data that is continuously being registered by the sensors on eASD modules installed on the truck cab. The sensors capture data on spring travel, load cycles, temperature, compressed air consumption. 

The designs were used to create a prototype that shows how a user can interact with the app, as in register an account, add a new cab, pick routes, switch between different cab modes, etc. 

The Design team accentuated visualization of the information that the app provides:  

• Stats on collected data are presented in charts and graphs 
• Interactive map shows the driver’s location in real-time 
• Saved routes provide information on distance, travel time, road quality 
• The interface is intuitive and easy to use.

Result

As a part of our experience design services, Symphony Solutions Design team created a high-fidelity interactive prototype that behaves exactly as a real application would. The prototype can be used by ContiTech to present the concept to potential clients at various tech expos. 

The app aims to improve the experience of truck drivers and fleet managers by providing comfort and convenience, both on and off the road. By using big data, fleet managers may choose better routes that are sparing on equipment and plan for preventative maintenance. 

The concept of the app relies on Cloud technologies to work with big data which presents unlimited possibilities for smart individualization.