An ambulance moves through traffic, lights flashing and siren sounding off. The dispatcher is on the line, collecting vital information, while monitoring the status of the ambulance at the same time. What if that dispatcher could follow the live movement of the ambulance as it drives along the road, knowing it was quickly and safely arriving at the scene? This is now a reality with Active Tracking.What is Active Tracking and how does it benefit emergency vehicles? Play the video to see it in action.

Fire Departments, Police, and Paramedic Services are all under public pressure to reduce response times, while protecting the safety of drivers and pedestrians on the road. Technology has an important role to play in this effort.

Ideally suited for first responders, delivery and taxi fleets, and any industry in which knowing the precise vehicle position is critical, Active Tracking allows customers to view their vehicles in near real-time. For example, an ambulance dispatcher can watch the vehicle’s progress and reassure a caller that the ambulance has just turned off the highway onto their street. Another fleet dispatcher could closely monitor vehicle activity and see, at a glance, if a driver is driving too fast.

Using Active Tracking is like viewing your fleet vehicle from a traffic helicopter.

Watch live as the vehicle slows down for traffic, accelerates, stops at the side of the road, or speeds down a winding road.

How It Works

Active Tracking is made possible with increased data logging frequency and animation in MyGeotab. The animation feature displays estimates of the real-time location of the vehicle onto the live map. Viewers are able to watch a simulated icon of the vehicle as it is moving. This new feature provides dispatchers and fleet managers with a very accurate depiction of where a vehicle enabled with this technology is at any given time.

See For Yourself – Watch the Active Tracking Playlist on YouTube

• Two Vehicles with Camera
• Crossing a Major Intersection
• Cul-De-Sac
• Leaving a Zone
• City Road (in traffic)

When Active Tracking is enabled, Geotab uses smart technology to request data from the Geotab GO Device at varying frequency intervals. The data is then relayed to servers for processing and the position of the vehicle is reflected on to the map. When the icon is shown as a triangle, this indicates that the vehicle is in motion. As the vehicle speeds up or slows down, that change is also reflected in the motion of the icon on the map.

Previously, data was spooled into a buffer and then uploaded once the buffer was full. Based on this concept, some data could have been uploaded fairly fast if the buffer was filled quickly. On the other hand, if there was less overall data coming in, then it took the buffer longer to get filled and therefore the data would be received much slower.

To illustrate the data spooling and buffer concept, we can compare it to a filling a gooseneck jug with water using a cup versus a funnel. If you were to use the cup to start filling the jug, you would have to wait until each cup was filled, then take the cup and carefully pour the water into the jug. This process would be very slow. Think of the time it would take! Alternatively, if you inserted a funnel into the gooseneck of the jug, and poured the water into it directly, the jug would be filled fairly quickly. There would be much less delay using the funnel. Active Tracking is similar to the “funnel method.”

Using patented algorithms, MyGeotab presents that granular location information on an animated map, reflecting the steady movement of the vehicle — instead of the jagged jumps seen with other telematics solutions. As a result, Geotab’s Active Tracking solution provides deep, actionable insights that are particularly useful in applications where the precise location of a vehicle for dispatch purposes is essential.

How to Enable Active Tracking for Fleet Vehicles

Through the ProPlus Plan, you are able to activate features such as Active Tracking, third-party integrations and other special features. Active Tracking is automatically enabled for users on the ProPlus Plan. Geotab customers on the Pro plan can turn on Active Tracking on the MyGeotab Vehicle Edit page (note: enabling this feature moves the device from Pro to ProPlus). Active Tracking is required for time-sensitive server-based rules and notifications such as posted road speed warnings for the driver using Geotab’s GO TALK live in-vehicle verbal coaching solution (IOX-GOTALK).