Ticket Machines Research Articles

From Parking Meters to Vending Machines: A Study of Usability Issues in Self-Service Technologies

This paper describes a mixed-methods usability study of seven diverse Self-Service Technologies (SSTs). SSTs mediate many of our everyday interactions with individuals, businesses, and government organizations. Parking meters, transport ticket machines, electric vehicle recharge points, and fast-food ordering kiosks are all likely familiar examples of this category of technology, promising convenient access to products and services. Despite their ubiquity, many SSTs suffer from severe usability issues, the nature of which have not been explored to date by the HCI community. This study evaluates the interactions between users and a broad sample of SSTs, details the usability issues that occurred, explores their connections and consequences, and presents a set of design considerations that may lead to their remediation.

Developing a Body Count IOT Sensor and Future Evolution of IOT

The term digital is now becoming the prefix for everything done traditionally. With technology continuing to advance, it is likely that it will become an increasingly important part of many industries. However, it is important to consider the potential consequences of technology and automation and take steps to mitigate them. This paper portrays the demerits in metro system which is designed to provide efficient and convenient service to its passengers. However, a limitation has been observed in the ticketing machines, where multiple people can pass through with just one ticket. In this paper, we propose a solution to this problem by implementing a body count sensor to ensure only one person can pass through with each ticket. This solution has the potential to significantly improve the experience of commuters and could serve as a model for similar transportation systems in other cities. We also done some survey on students with IT background to see how much of the generation is aware of technology and to get insights about future of IOT.

Privacy-preserving solution for vehicle parking services complying with EU legislation.

Today, many modern cities adopt online smart parking services as best practices. Citizens can easily access these services using their smartphones or the infotainment panels in their cars. These services' primary objective is to give drivers the ability to quickly identify free parking slots, which should reduce parking time, save fuel, and relieve traffic in urban areas. However, the privacy offered by these services should be comparable to that of the standard paper-based parking solutions offered by parking ticket machines. On the other hand, a privacy-preserving smart parking service's design may raise a number of issues, including how to prevent double or multiple uses of parking tickets, how to prevent user tracking and profiling, how to revoke malicious users, how to handle data statistics without violating users' privacy, and how to comply with regulations like the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). In this article, we present multidisciplinary research on a comprehensive vehicle parking system that protects users' privacy. The research includes a range of topics, from the examination of regulatory compliance to the design of privacy-preserving parking registration and vehicle parking services to the implementation of privacy-preserving parking data processing features for data analysts. We provide a security analysis of our concept as well as several experimental results.

Analysis of the Factors Affecting the Construction of Subway Stations in Residential Areas

To design a more suitable scheme under different conditions so that subway stations can play their role better, this study investigated the construction elements of subway stations in residential areas. Metro stations in residential areas are generally located at the intersection of urban roads. As the “handover space” of the city, the construction principle should be based on people’s experience. As the core basis for traffic planning and future operation management, construction of subways in residential areas should take into consideration factors such as trip volume, distribution, and mode selection of residents, and be determined based on such mathematical models as the unit factor method, gravity model, and disaggregated analysis method. Station site selection is based on the point, line, and surface elements, and the importance of a station in the line network is judged by degree and betweenness centrality; the accessibility of the line network is determined by connectivity. In this study, the influencing factors of residential area subway station construction are divided into construction elements and site selection. Internal construction elements of stations include station entrances and exits, escalators, ticket machines, and transfer routes, and the conclusion of the mathematical model is used to select or give opinions about the internal construction elements of the subway. The point, line, and surface elements and the connection relationship between the subway and buses are used to determine the site selection of the subway. Furthermore, this paper discusses the three elements that affect the construction of the subway, comprehensively considers the functional requirements of the subway, and makes reasonable adjustments to each element. Finally, the requirements for the elements of the subway construction are determined.

Training Older Adults to Use Public Information System: Effects of Medium and Instruction Type on Training Efficacy

Technology training design for older adults is important as well-designed training methods can greatly improve technology accessibility for them. While there exist general design guidelines, such as supporting self-paced and goal-oriented training and using step-by-step instructions, additional design knowledge needs to be developed and validated empirically to further improve technology training design for older users. In an effort to contribute to the current design knowledge base, this study investigated the medium and instruction type effects on the efficacy of training older adults to use a public information system (a public ticket machine). Four training methods, combinations of 2 medium types (paper, digital) and 2 instruction types (goals-only, goals-and-actions), were evaluated in a lab experiment. While the older participants’ task performance generally increased after training, the degree of improvement differed significantly between the training methods. The combination of digital medium and goals-only instructions showed the highest performance improvement resulting from training.

Commuter Line (KRL) Passenger Perception Against Government Policies Of The Covid 19 Pandemic Era At Jakarta Kota Station

The Indonesian government issued policies to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic, one of which was urban rail transportation such as the Jabodetabek KRL. This KRL carried many passengers every day. This research aimed to provide input for the government as a regulator related to policies in the rail transportation and for operators as implementers of services at stations and train travel. The research was conducted at the Jakarta city station with 99 respondents. The results revealed that 60% of respondents wanted a cross sign on the station waiting room bench to sit, 71% of respondents washed their hands when getting off the train, and 48% of respondents washed their hands or used hand sanitizer after tapping in on the ticket machine. During the trip, 70% of respondents used hand sanitizers and 62% of respondents obeyed the rules not to speak one way or two ways by telephone or in person. In open-ended questions, 38.61% of respondents wanted all passengers and operators to comply with and tighten health protocols, 12.87% of respondents wanted operators to provide the best service for passengers, and 8.91% of respondents wanted operators to notice the number of passengers during rush hour. The researcher also found that there were no more restrictions and partitions for the seats because there were many passengers standing. Researchers expected that the Covid-19 pandemic will end soon.

Analysis of Rail Passenger Flow in a Rail Station Concourse Prior to and During the COVID-19 Pandemic Using Event-Based Simulation Models and Scenarios

During COVID-19, certain means were proposed to improve crowd management in the Birmingham New Street railway station. To validate the current system of crowd management in the station, this paper examines the rail passenger flow in the concourse of the Birmingham New Street railway station and the passenger interactions and queueing phenomena associated with it, mainly at the ticket machines, offices and gates, prior to and during the implementation of COVID-19 measures. The passenger behaviour in the concourse of the station was simulated using the SIMUL8 event-based simulation modelling package. Three different scenarios were modelled to analyse the changes and impacts from pre-COVID-19 and within the COVID-19 context. The results revealed that passenger behaviour in railway stations is changing due to COVID-19. Specifically, passengers are more likely to buy tickets using their smartphones or online prior to or whilst entering the station so that they can go through the station concourse with minimal queuing times and avoid contact with a facility of common use at the station, whereas those without tickets are more likely to be in a queue to buy their tickets in the station. For pre-COVID, the results showed that even with a reduced number of ticket machines, overcrowding inside the station was unlikely to occur, as 80% of all passengers in the simulation completed service within a 15-minute time frame. However, during implementation of COVID-19 measures, as the number of passengers using the station dropped significantly and more passengers bought their tickets using their smartphones and/or online, queueing times were also shorter, and thus passengers spent less time in the system. The simulation results were in accordance with the expected practice; hence the effectiveness of the simulation model was verified. Overall, as a result of this study, the following suggestions to improve crowd management in a railway passenger station concourse are proposed: encourage passengers to purchase tickets on their smartphones, remove ticket gates and replace them with sensors, and provide a one-way passenger flow system in the main concourse of the station.

Digital transformation of everyday lives of older Swiss adults: use of and attitudes toward current and future digital services

Digital (consumer) services, such as ticket machines, self-checkout, and online reservations, have become increasingly important in modern society. Studies on adoption of these services and openness to using future public digital services (e.g., online voting, online taxes, electronic patient records) have mostly focused on younger adults or nonrepresentative samples among older adults. Therefore, two important questions remain that can best be addressed with representative sampling: To what extent do older adults use or are willing to use current and future digital services in their everyday lives? How do older adults evaluate the ease of use of these services?. The study included data on use of current and future digital services among a large Swiss sample of 1149 people age 65 years and older (mean age: 74.1 years, SD: 6.69). Descriptive and multivariate analyses showed that (a) established services such as cash machines were used more often than new services, such as self-checkout apps or machines. (b) Perceived ease of use is related to age, socioeconomic status, health, and interest in technology. (c) Only 8.9% had an overall positive attitude toward these digital services, and this attitude was predicted by age, gender, socioeconomic status, and interest in technology. (d) Participants were more often open to filing taxes online than voting online, and openness was predicted by age, income, and interest in technology. Today, mainly older adults with a high interest in technology use digital services. Nevertheless, potential for greater use is evident.

Highly transparent flexible CuI film for antibacterial applications

In this study, the CuI film was firstly revealed to have significant antibacterial activity. The as-prepared CuI thin films on flexible plastic (polyvinylchloride, PVC) substrates were developed by the liquid iodination method. This method is simple, low-cost and environmentally friendly to fabricate flexible CuI films. A suitable reaction time between the Cu3N precursor and aqueous iodine solution is the key parameter for developing highly transparent CuI films, and an average transmittance in visible spectrum was higher than 85%. In addition, the CuI films have prominent antibacterial effects against Staphylococcus aureus and Escherichia coli. These properties indicate that CuI films are promising for built-in application to top layer displays in public places, such as hotel and department stores, ticket machines and touch screens in smart devices.

A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF POINT CLOUDS SEMANTIC SEGMENTATION USING THREE DIFFERENT NEURAL NETWORKS ON THE RAILWAY STATION DATASET

Abstract. Point cloud data have rich semantic representations and can benefit various applications towards a digital twin. However, they are unordered and anisotropically distributed, thus being unsuitable for a typical Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN) to handle. With the advance of deep learning, several neural networks claim to have solved the point cloud semantic segmentation problem. This paper evaluates three different neural networks for semantic segmentation of point clouds, namely PointNet++, PointCNN and DGCNN. A public indoor scene of the Amersfoort railway station is used as the study area. Unlike the typical indoor scenes and even more from the ubiquitous outdoor ones in currently available datasets, the station consists of objects such as the entrance gates, ticket machines, couches, and garbage cans. For the experiment, we use subsets from the data, remove the noise, evaluate the performance of the selected neural networks. The results indicate an overall accuracy of more than 90% for all the networks but vary in terms of mean class accuracy and mean Intersection over Union (IoU). The misclassification mainly occurs in the classes of couch and garbage can. Several factors that may contribute to the errors are analyzed, such as the quality of the data and the proportion of the number of points per class. The adaptability of the networks is also heavily dependent on the training location: the overall characteristics of the train station make a trained network for one location less suitable for another.

Computer modeling analysis of METRO ticket gates impact to evacuation procedures

Subway rail system is considered the best choice for big cities to solve surface transportation problems in terms of congestion, efficiency, and speed. The increasing use of these facilities by more and more passengers has made vital the need to ensure high safety standards. The effective structure of the evacuation plan in an emergency event is essential. A critical factor for a successful evacuation is the proper functioning of the egress paths that must be clear of any obstacles.To ensure the passengers’ proof-of-fare (POF) public transport organizations have installed ticket validation machines proportionally in the facilities. In Athens METRO system, ticket gates providing automatic fare collection have replaced these ticket validation machines. Both POF systems may be considered as egress path obstructions that need to be taken into account in the initial evacuation plan design, since these POF installations provide different available width on the evacuation paths.The paper investigates the impact of prior ticket validator and modern automatic fare collector machines on evacuation procedures in Athens METRO stations. The impact evaluation is based on three factors: i) total evacuation time, ii) time spent in queues (overcrowding effect) and iii) egress path flow rate, evacuation obstruction, human behavior.

Smart Ticket Machine: STM

In the transportation sector, Smart Ticket Machines (STMs) have arisen as automated ticketing options that provide ease and effectiveness for both users and operators. The research articles on smart ticket machines analysed in this review of the literature are synthesised, including topics like user acceptability, implementation case studies, technology, security, accessibility, data analytics, and interaction with mobile apps and the Internet of Things (IoT). The review emphasises how STMs improve transportation networks' operational effectiveness, passenger satisfaction, and sustainability. User acceptability and satisfaction, with an emphasis on usability, dependability, and a variety of payment choices, are critical variables determining the success of STMs. Implementation case studies show increases in ticketing effectiveness, shorter lines, better revenue collection, and satisfied customers. To ensure dependable and safe ticketing operations, technological factors, including hardware, software, and security measures, have undergone considerable investigation. Usability and adherence to accessibility standards are prioritised with an emphasis on catering to a variety of user groups. Optimised resource allocation, real-time information updates, and individualised services are made possible through data analytics and interaction with mobile applications and IoT. However, there are drawbacks, including a lack of generalizability, data privacy issues, maintenance and expense concerns, and hurdles to user adoption. Enhanced personalization and customization capabilities, advanced analytics and predictive modelling, seamless integration with smart city initiatives, user-centered design and accessibility improvements, sustainability considerations, and further integration with mobility platforms are some of the future research directions. The functionality, usability, and integration of smart ticket machines in transportation systems will develop by addressing these limits and pursuing future directions, encouraging effective, user-friendly, and sustainable ticketing solutions. For academics, practitioners, and stakeholders engaged in the design, deployment, and development of Smart Ticket Machines, the findings of this literature study offer invaluable insights.

Internet of Things Assisted Monitoring Using Ultrasound-Based Gesture Recognition Contactless System

In the last decade, we have seen an increase in the use of digital technologies in our daily lives, including advanced systems such as mobile applications, smart digital kiosks for intelligent retailing, touch screens for ordering food, or simple implementations such as the ticket machines in the butchers. However, from the perspective of interaction design, those sensing systems suffer from several constraints and limitations such as, low usability and poor hygiene. For example, the elderly or the disabled normally have huge difficulties when interacting with these types of digital systems. Moreover, the recent SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has made us rethink the way we interact with the digital devices. Hence, in this paper, we present a novel solution for digital interaction through a contactless model. This system can provide human gesture recognition and therefore it can be integrated into others to achieve contactless control. We have implemented a prototype based on cost efficient sensors to validate the idea’s feasibility. Moreover, a sequence of real world experiments has also been conducted to evaluate its performance. This system is composed with 1) a 3d printed grid of ultrasound sensors to capture the distance information from a human body; 2) software to analyse the data for gesture predictions. This analysis results will be transformed into control commands to interact with the attached system. The experimental results have shown that the proposed system is capable of providing a contactless Human Computer Interaction (HCI), and also has a great opportunity to replace existing touching interaction manner with a remote control scheme.

The factors that influence the acceptance and adoption of mobile marketing by university students

Technological evolution has a strong impact in many aspects of our daily lives: from turn control systems in hospitals or supermarkets, to ticketing machines in subway stations that already have to...

Examination of preferences in the field of mobility of the city of Pila in terms of services provided by the Municipal Transport Company in Pila

Abstract The aim of the article is to learn about the mobility preferences of the inhabitants of the city of Pila in terms of services provided by the Municipal Transport Company in Pila (MTC). The research aims to improve the quality of services provided by MTC. The article characterizes the concept of urban transport and mobility, and then proposes a mobility model that takes into account the preferences of residents when choosing a means of transport. This model was analyzed in the form of a questionnaire survey. In which, inter alia, o user data (sex, age, place of residence), information on the mobility structure, travel organization, selection criteria of the analyzed means of transport, i.e. public transport (e.g. cost, time, comfort, safety, punctuality and frequency of travel). Based on the research, it can be concluded that the inhabitants of Pila choose public transport because they do not have a driving license, they download information about the timetable from the Internet, buses in Pila are punctual, comfortable, safe, and drivers and ticket inspectors are usually polite, buses should run more often, they are incorrectly synchronized, a new bus line should be open and the ticket machine is easy to use. In addition, the residents of Pila do not know what the Dynamic Passenger Information System is, but they would like to use the mobile application showing the actual time of arrival of the bus.

An efficient privacy-preserving pay-by-phone system for regulated parking areas

Traditional pay-and-display ticket machines are currently coexisting, but will probably be replaced in the near future, with pay-by-phone applications. Such applications facilitate the payment for parking in regulated areas. Companies providing this service collect and manage information about all the parking transactions performed by drivers. That information is very sensitive and can be used to generate reports on the parking history of drivers, posing a threat on their privacy. This paper proposes a pay-by-phone parking system in which the service provider is prevented from being able to track the parking transactions of drivers. The new proposal requires drivers to be connected only at the beginning of a parking transaction, or at the moment of indicating that a parking transaction took less time than expected. Prototype experiments have shown that the new proposal is much more efficient, in terms of computational cost, than the most complete previous existing system, while providing the same functionalities and higher security.

Space-to-face (S2F) hospitality in spaces and places

Abstract This study investigates how spaces and places with no human interaction convey a sense of hospitality – a phenomenon we term space-to-face (S2F) hospitality. By problematizing the traditional conceptualizations of hospitality that emphasize the role of human interaction, this study aims to highlight the spatial aspects of hospitality. Physical environment has commonly been investigated only as one dimension of hospitality. However, spaces and places where there is nothing but the physical environment to convey a sense of hospitality are becoming increasingly common. For instance, railway or bus stations with ticket machines have no human interaction but a space and a place to convey a sense of being welcome or unwelcome. Using a participant-generated photography, this study was built on empirical data from 46 participants, who provided 234 photos and associated descriptions of perceived hospitality in spaces and places. As a result, we found six dimensions under macro and micro layers that capture S2F hospitality: domesticity, cleanliness, safety and security, restrictedness, intactness, and functionality. As a contribution, this study broadens the views on hospitality, and explores the concept of S2F hospitality that is relevant to for all types of spaces and places.

Methodology of testing positive attitudes to electrostatic discharges — measuring position

One of the most common causes of damage to electronic devices is electrostatic discharge — ESD for short. They arise during the normal use of the equipment by the operator who in adverse conditions (dry air and electrifying materials) can charge electrostatically to very high voltages and, for example, touching the ticket machine keyboard in the train compartment and causing an electrostatic discharge. There are many mechanisms for the formation of electrostatic charges, among others: during friction, grinding or rapid separation of solid, liquid or gaseous bodies. Another electrifying method is the phenomenon of electrostatic induction during which in the electrostatic field a polarization of the body occurs in the neutral state in a way of separating positive and negative charges. Keywords: electrostatic discharges, electronic systems, phenomenon of electrostatic induction

PEDESTRIAN SIMULATION OF METRO RAIL TRANSIT (MRT) LINE 7 STATION 1-NORTH AVENUE STATION, QUEZON CITY, PHILIPPINES

Simulation of pedestrian flow represents an advanced approach in modeling and evaluating train stations. In this study, pedestrian simulation was done using the simulation software Simio to assess the passenger capacity of MRT 7 Station 1-North Avenue Station through level of service (LOS), queuing system, and train facility utilization. This paper presents the actual situation inside the train station while predicting the behavior of queuing pedestrians and provides an accurate estimate of the volume-to-capacity ratio of passengersentering the station. The study’s approach debugged the conventional assignments of pedestrians currently used in the field. The constructed three-dimensional building of the North Avenue Station served as framework for the simulation. Sources, sinks, servers, and paths of the software were the main elements of the simulation. Each library was defined by their time usage based on data gathered. Time usages of 1.21 sec. and 240 sec. for sources and sinks, respectively, were used in the simulation. Servers were defined by the train facilities utilizedin the simulation, namely, automatic ticketing machines (TVM) with time usage of 43 seconds, ticketing toll gates with 1.4 seconds, and manual ticketing windows (BOM) with 20 seconds. In addition to the libraries,pathsthat provided the flow, direction, and distribution of pedestrians were calibrated using 10% for TVM users, 35% for BOM users, and 55% for others (regular tickets, beep cards, promo trips) based on data obtained. Simulation results showed that the new proposed plan has a higher passenger capacity than the original plan.

Acoustic comfort in large railway stations

Large railway stations attract a wide range of passengers and citizens, and these buildings are likely to have a complex acoustic environment. Previous studies have focused on reducing people’s exposure to excessive sound levels caused by transportation, but more research is needed to assess people’s preferences and ensure their psychophysical wellbeing. The aim of this study was to explore the complex aspects of the sound environment in large railway stations that contribute to acoustic comfort. On-site measurements and an acoustic comfort survey were performed at a case study site in Harbin, China. The results showed a significant positive correlation between the subjective comfort evaluations and objective measurements of the sound pressure level and reverberation time. Differences in dominant sound sources in different spaces lead to different evaluations of acoustic comfort. People prefer broadcast sound, but its intelligibility needs to be improved. When the density of people increases, the preference for speech sounds and activity sounds decline rapidly. With regard to demographic and social factors, older people and people with higher incomes and education levels are more tolerant of the environment.As railway transportation has become modernized, large railway stations now play an important role in civic architecture. The aim of this study was to explore the effects of sound sources on the sound environment and acoustic comfort in such an extra-large space. Based on subjective and objective measurements of a typical railway station in China that has an extra-large space and multiple sound sources, the effects of sound sources in different functional zones were studied. The overall acoustic comfort and sound pressure levels were related to the sonic composition of the sound sources. The roles of various individual sound sources were investigated, including the speech sounds of other passengers in the seating area, the speech sounds of staff, the sounds of placing luggage in the security scan machine in the security check area, the sounds of a ticket machine in the ticket lobby, and the speech sounds of restaurant workers. The sound sources that have dominant impacts on the survey participants' evaluations of acoustic comfort were determined. In terms of acoustic comfort, broadcast sound was the most preferable, whereas mechanical noise and luggage noise were the least preferable. The sound levels of speech, the intelligibility of both broadcast and speech sounds, and the loudness of the three dominant sound sources exhibited a linear correlation with the sound pressure level. In terms of the effect of the sound characteristics on acoustic comfort, the sound level of speech was the dominant factor. Overall, acoustic comfort can be effectively improved by better planning of the combination and arrangement of sound sources.