If your company has assets with GPS tracking, you may want to configure automatic operations of coupling and uncoupling of these assets to vehicles based on their global position.
Configuration
You can find the options to configure this operation in Account > Driving conditions - Coupling, marking the flag Allow automatic coupling based on GPS as Yes:
Here you can define for which vehicles and assets this feature will be active. You have two ways to do it:
- If you mark the option Include all and future vehicles/assets with GPS as Yes, all vehicles of your account will be configured for the automatic coupling/uncoupling - including those vehicles and assets that might be created after this configuration is done.
- If you have a specific group of vehicles/assets that you wish to have this configuration active for, you can leave these flags as No and select the vehicles and assets manually at will.
How it works
After defining which vehicles and assets will be using this feature, Frotcom will monitor their GPS position and proceed with the operations of coupling and uncoupling as the following:
Coupling
Frotcom will automatically couple an asset to a vehicle if all the following conditions are met:
- The asset is sending GPS coordinates that match those of the vehicle that started the trip.
- The average speed of both the vehicle and the asset, calculated from the GPS data packets of the last 20 minutes, is greater than 30 km/h.
- The vehicle and the asset remain in close proximity for at least 3 minutes.
- No other vehicle is traveling within 3,500 meters of the asset (to prevent coupling errors in convoy situations).
If all these conditions are satisfied, Frotcom will first uncouple the asset from any previously associated vehicle (if applicable) before coupling it to the new vehicle.
Note: Because the system calculates the average speed over the last 20 minutes, coupling detection may experience a slight delay, especially if the vehicle or asset was previously stationary or moving at low speeds.
Uncoupling
- Is the vehicle traveling at more than 30km/h while one of the coupled asset's position is not following it? Or is the asset travelling at more than 30km/h while the coupled vehicle's position is not following it?
- Does this continue for at least 3 minutes?
If all the above is true, the asset not following the vehicle will be uncoupled from the vehicle.
In addition to the scenario described above, if one of the components (vehicle or asset) stops sending records (due to sleep mode, for instance), and the other component moves away, the asset will also be automatically uncoupled from the vehicle.
Note: to guarantee the operations are executed at their finest, the GPS tracking devices must be configured with a Record sending interval of 1min-20min, or with a shorter interval, if available.
Tracking on Frotcom
The result of automatic coupling and uncoupling is shown on Frotcom the same way as the manual operations. You can see more details about manually coupling and uncoupling vehicles and assets on this article.
Now, to differ a manual from an automatic coupling, you must select a vehicle/asset from the vehicle list and check its bottom panel:
Automatic operations have their user marked as System, while manual couplings have the user who placed the operation.
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