RFID is the wireless non-contact use of radio-frequency electromagnetic fields to transfer data, for the purposes of automatically identifying and tracking tags attached to objects.
“Transmitters will be fitted to the exterior of buses and at the punching stations, a receiver will be fitted. The transmitters will produce radio frequency waves and when the bus passes by the punching station, the transmitter will encode a registration number given to a vehicle and it will be decoded by the receiver and then stored at the computer attached to the receiver”, said a senior MVD official on the functioning of the machine. One transmitter costs Rs 1,000 and each bus owner will have to put in around Rs 1,500 for the receiver infrastructure, he said.
All the punching stations can be networked and when one bus passes one station, it can be identified in another station as well. “Moreover, in manual punching, sometimes, the door checker or conductor comes in another vehicle to punch the card.
In this case only when the bus passes through the punching station does it gets recorded and this rules out the scope for manipulation. The convenience is that door checkers or conductors need not step down for punching”, he said.
He said that when the system was connected to a control room at the district MVD headquarters, the movement of private buses could be monitored from the control room.