Milênio Bus

Startup Milênio bus has developed a technology capable of counting passengers in public transport in real time, and can thus take this information collected to the companies that operate in that market, based on this information generated, these companies will have data needed to improve efficiency increasing the number of vehicles in circulation to meet the demand at times of greater flow of passengers or to withdraw from circulation some vehicle that is running empty without compromising the passengers, thus being able to manage these fleets in the best possible way and improving efficiency in transportation in general, and with this best efficiency and optimum leveling of vehicles with the right amount of passengers, it will significantly reduce the emission of pollutants into the environment

The problem we are dealing with it´s in public transport in general, where vehicles are often fuller or more empty than they should be, damaging the efficiency of both, transport and the emission of pollutants, this is due to the lack of information that have to be able to work with better fleet management. With real-time passenger counting technology, companies can assess passenger flow at any given time so they can decide how to better manage their fleets to better serve public transportation in general, and with a better use efficiency in the health of these vehicles, less impacting the environment because the operation is happening with maximum efficiency, that is, emitting lower index of pollutants.This problem directly impacts globally, both on the passenger and the environment. For example, only in Brazil 50 million people use public transport on a daily basis, equivalent to 25% of the population, the global average that uses the same transport every day is 15% up to 20%.

We are working to help people who use public transport, to provide better service quality and with more security, with this improvement we believe that it will be possible to increase the number of users in general in public transport. We understand clearly that public transport nowadays is not the best, given the difficulties that passengers face on a daily basis due to the lack of efficiency in the management by the companies that control the market. With the improvement of this management and an operation with more efficiency, more users will adhere to the use of public transport and thus the reduction of pollutants emitted will be very impacting, as much in the reduction of the private vehicles, bringing these people for the public transportation as the correctly leveling for every bus, train or subway operating every route with 100% efficiency.

Milênio Bus brings the technologies of IoT (Internet of Things), Artificial Intelligence and Computational Vision in the urban mobility sector. Hardware, app mobile and platform are integrated, generating features to the passenger, one of them: to know if the next vehicle is full or not, by informing the quantity of passengers inside each vehicle, in real time.  The data obtained by the hardware instantaneously feed into the information mapping platform, which uses computational techniques of fleet optimization, data generation and intelligence for public transport.

Our product and which problems we are working to solve and how:h

i) Hardware: Able to generate the identification of passengers who embark and/or disembark from the bus;

ii) App: With the information of the number of passengers in the vehicles, this data is sent to the application of the future users so that they can make the decision if they use that full vehicle or the next one with less people, thus there will be a leveling of passengers in the bus;

iii) Software: With the hardware data, our software (platform) is fed, allowing managers to understand people's movements in real time and, in addition, to create strategies to reduce or increase the use of vehicles. The platform itself generates a routing system, heat map and a complete dashboard for urban mobility managers;

Benefits of our solution: Having real-time information on the number of passengers benefits the entire sphere of public transport, generating value for all sectors. i) Bus Company: It allows to promote a transport with more planning and quality in the service, since it is made available the number and model of vehicles more convenient to attend the volume of passengers; ii) Passengers: It provides the decision making of which bus to embark and to have comfort in its displacement; iii) City Halls: The actual number of passengers is made available using the city's public transport, this provides a clarity of service delivery by local companies (concessionaires); The fact of having the predictability of passengers is a demand of the market of bus companies, since such estimates are fundamental so that there is the planning of lines, schedules or model of vehicle that will be used, since the main problem is in the dynamics of cities and of the population that constantly changes.

Based on the IoT (Internet of Things), Artificial Intelligence and Computational Vision technology, Millennium Bus has developed a real-time passenger counting method using existing technology called Machine Learning, applying this solution to public transport with the objective to act as a data collection company (Big Data), bringing to the urban mobility sector a new way of acting and optimizing transport, based on this method adopted in the technology cited above, it is possible through the data generated that companies improve your managerial performance and routing of vehicles in circulation with the information generated by our hardware system and people using our mobile application can decide which vehicle can pick up to reach the final destination. Currently there are some companies operating in the market but with a hardware with a lower index of hits due to the way passengers are counted, for example when two people pass through the bus door, the sensor will only count one person, equipment developed by Millenium Bus, was fully developed and parameterized through Machine Learning and the use of cameras in addition to sensors, to perform the count according to the body characteristic of each one mainly in moments of high flow of passengers at the same time, generating an excellent response.

The AI, Artificial Intelligence, IoT (Internet of Things) and Machine Learning technologies are fully parameterized by our company and our hardware realizes this passenger counting correctly, without accumulating any error, so it was necessary that pilot projects were carried out using all the necessary technology to reach the final objective and to be able to improve the urban mobility sector. In order to facilitate the payment of this transportation our application will make available the digital payment of the passenger's journey (Block Chain) and will inform which vehicle is ideal to arrive at the final destination and the stocking of the same at the exact moment of the passenger's boarding, giving option of taking the first vehicle or wait for a next one which does the same route but with a smaller stocking.

Milênio Bus has been created in a competition in the urban mobility sector to solve problems that affect directly and indirectly the population that uses this service, it was identified great dissatisfaction by these people because of the vehicle stocking and the lack of a better fleet management for to meet the needs of the population, we have created a way to count the number of these passengers so that companies place the amount of vehicles necessary to meet the demand of passengers according to the time and route. Public transport in many places does not offer the best conditions and generates wear and tear for those who use them, bringing great dissatisfaction. Throughout the evolution of the startup, the entrepreneurs could identify 3 problems related to the lack of information of not knowing the number of passengers in real time for mobility, they are:

i) Distribution: There are full and empty buses going to the same location at similar times.

ii) Fleet size: Currently, bus companies do not know where more passengers are going up or down, this information would allow the fleet manager to plan which model or quantity of vehicles could be made available in a certain line or time of day.

iii) Ratchet Audit: There is suspicion of ratchet auditing by public agencies, since the ratchet is analog, so it is sought with the count of passengers to turn it into a digital ratchet.

Currently, we are running pilot projects to achieve the assertiveness we require, being 95%.
We will be entering the market next semester and aiming to expand our system by Brazil until 2020 and in the second half of 2020 we will begin our internationalization, considering that there are companies abroad with the interest in using our passenger counting system, although not yet are available in the market, have aroused interest in the product because of its high precision in the response and improve its performance of routes and efficiency. In Brazil we aim to reach 50% of the market in the next 03 years (25 million people) and simultaneously about 10% of the international market in the next 5 years at least.

Our goal is to place the product first in the Brazilian market, expanding the domestic market by the end of the first half of 2020 and, in parallel with this expansion, to develop the internationalization plan, and can structure the best way to impact more countries through our solution, and evaluate what resources (human, time, financial) will be needed for this expansion plan in the best possible way and with speed. When talking about achieving 95% assertiveness in passenger counting, this requires a very great intellectual and technological development, being necessary to invest in hardware with a more advanced technology, besides the hiring of trainees to act in the implementation of artificial intelligence, machine learning, deep learning and computer vision. This we have in our network, but we are also going in the market to carry out the hiring of internships.

As we seek internationally our solution, it is about having the opportunity to show and present
our solution to companies and entrepreneurs from other countries, such as to enter into
partnerships with companies of the sector.

What are the barriers that currently exist for you to accomplish your goals for

At that moment our product is in the final stage of development, achieving a precision of 95% of the passengers' accuracy without any accumulation of errors in our hardware, then starting in the market, speaking more specifically about Brazil, we will face some barriers in the matter to be able to show the government that the product generates great results and impact, here the culture has some resistance because few companies control the public transportation sector and do not care about the condition of improvement for those who use these public transports, abroad we see a totally opposite scenario in which they have a vested interest in further improving public transport and adding the maximum value to those who use this kind of transport and helping companies to have less impact on the environment through the reduction of pollutants that these vehicles emit.In countries where responsible bodies are concerned with more efficient public transport, we may have a great incentive in the part of the investments needed to expand our company, in countries where there is less investment for improvement in this sector, we may need more resources to leverage our product

For countries that do not have so much government support, for example, we are participating in innovation competitions, allowing us to expose our technology developed to raise funds to expand our company and acquire new hardware and hiring employees, we have already got some investments recently and this has made it easier our development, we are frequently accompanying competitions of technology that has as a reward financial resources to be able to maximize our revenue because we are not in the market yet. For countries that support initiatives for new solutions for the population and improvements in environmental impact, we will introduce our system for validation through an pilot project and begin expansion with government support and working together with them. 

For technical barriers to the product, we will work to minimize these risks, so we will test all the components several times before using them in the final assembly of the hardware, we will test our neural network incessantly, and even after our system is implemented in the bus, we will continue to train our neural network full time. 

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Our team today is made up of six people. There are 04 partners in total, being:

- CEO - CTO - COO and CCO

- Two interns

After a competition to solve problems in the public transport sector, we identified that companies do not have great control of their fleets due to the lack of information generated to improve this performance, based on research to understand the market and the products which today serve this specific segment, we have identified that through our developed solution we can deliver a result with greater efficiency and more details added in the developed system.

Today we have a fully qualified technical team (composed by 03 engineers), specifically developed to improve the hardware in a differentiated way for the market, meeting the needs that the companies seek and the competitors can not deliver in their systems. This solution we developed and the precision we are working on is the great differential, we are also patenting our hardware and software to ensure greater security over the years.

At the moment we are developing our pilot project with the company METRA, which is one of the reference companies in the public transport sector in São Paulo, this work is being monitored closely by Mercedes Benz, so that, reaching the assertiveness of 95% of our passenger counter, we can discuss future plans between the Millennium Bus and Mercedes Benz, as previously expressed by them. The tests are being carried out in real conditions and weekly results of the evolution are presented, this project has a deadline of 04 months to reach the final objective and validation for the next steps.
We are also developing a project together with Petrobrás focused on vehicular health, developing a system that monitors the efficiency and consumption of each vehicle according to its ability to obtain the best possible condition through our vehicle health system that we are developing . To issue in our panel the results of this efficiency for the companies and with this information they will have greater control to carry out preventive maintenance and precautions to avoid breaks, being able to save with the expenses that may occur

Our business model is designed to add value to people and reflect
directly on the environment by using our hardware in public transportation we will improve vehicle performance and greater efficiency in route management according to the reports generated with the information provided by hardware and the improvement by companies of, we intend over time to increase the number of people using this service and also ideally leveling the number of people by bus, so that these vehicles transit more efficiently and emit less polluting. Our revenues are based on two ways, we can rent our hardware for each vehicle that uses it and also in the success rate of efficiency, reduce the consumption of vehicles according to the best fleet management and we will have a percentage in which the company will save on the consumption of these vehicles in general, these will be our forms of revenue from transportation (companies). There is a possibility of revenue from advertising in our mobile application, but this is a type of revenue that we are still evaluating whether it will be positive or not, because many people are restricted in using mobile applications that generate pop-ups with advertisements for the user of public transport we will not collect any kind of income from them, wanting for these people to only add value in their day to day and generate benefits that we deem necessary to improve these means of transport with more quality.

We recently won some of the competitions in which we participated (more details and values in the next question) and generated a good cash flow to start with our product in the market and have the financial breath for this whole year. Our financial return will be realized according to the rent of our hardware and a percentage of the savings we bring to the companies that rent our equipment, in the future there will also be the possibility of receiving resources from funds and investors to size our market according to our expansion plan. As we are developing a project to impact the lives of millions of people to improve their daily transportation condition and also impact on the environment positively, we have seen that countries that are concerned about sustainability and improving conditions of the population are willing to invest in our with the purpose of adding value in the way we mentioned, for people and the environment.

We are applying for the challenge due to its ability to make things happen together with Solve, collaborating with the development of our company and connecting with people and companies working in the public transport segment (bus, train and subway) to structure a pilot project in the region where the final challenge will be realized and in the sequence develop an internationalization plan in the USA with the help of the necessary resources that the challenge will grant to the winner, be it financially and mainly through Solve's network to make things evolve , the most important recurring award of this competition, is that this challenge gives the winner the opportunity, agility and easier in expanding the selected company that will cause the greatest impact to people and the environment. There is no doubt for us that having Solve's support for this achievement is more important than any financial action of the program, we want to bring this concept to improve the condition of public transportation worldwide for people and directly impact on the environment with the significant reduction of pollutants with the improvement of transportation management.

For us, it is extremely important that, if we are the chosen ones, we will be able to show the competent bodies and the government that our technology developed for this segment brings great benefits to people and the environment, making it possible to carry out the tests with the people in charge of this sector, whether by private or governmental companies, to present the results of these tests that we will carry out together. More valuable than this theoretical introduction of our work, for us, is the opportunity to show these benefits that will be generated by the passenger counter in real time and what can be done on a large scale, improving the efficiency of public transport, thus increasing the number of users and decreasing the number of private cars in circulation daily

- Public organizations/Government responsible for the bus, train and subway.

- Private companies operating in the same segments mentioned above.

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