RIYADH, 11 June 2003 — A Saudi economic offset company has manufactured a satellite-based Automatic Vehicle Location System (AVLS) that makes it possible to track the movement and speed of a vehicle on a bilingual Arabic/English digital map.
Dr. Ghassan A. Alshibl, president and CEO of Advanced Electronics Company (AEC), said the system provided other important statistics about each trip, such as mileage, driving time, maximum and average speed, etc. It can also help in planning and printing predefined routes or working regions of the vehicle.
The targeted customers include limousine and transportation companies, post office vans, private and government fleets, and police cars. It is slated to be especially useful for Haj operators, who will be able to keep track of their vehicles and give the precise location of the fleet in real time.
The CEO said the system could be upgraded in terms of its remote control capability. This would allow the vehicle’s engine to be remotely switched off should there be an attempt to hijack or misuse it in any unauthorized or illegal manner.
The fully indigenous AVLS was displayed at a press conference held at the headquarters of AEC, a high-tech company whose other locally manufactured products include components for F-16 aircraft and Abram tanks as well as telecommunications systems, and an electronic prayer clock.
Dr. Ghassan said their product, with the brand name Madar, was developed in collaboration with King Abdul Aziz City for Science and Technology, Farsi Maps, Saudi Telecom Company and Generation Skills.
KACST provided a Geographic Information System (GIS) that helps locate a vehicle on a digital map of Riyadh supplied by Farsi Maps. The vehicle’s driver can communicate with the base station via SMS sent through STC’s mobile phone network, while Generation Skills is involved on the marketing side. The whole system is based on a combination of satellite navigation, GPS, GIS and mobile telephony for sending and receiving messages through a base station located at AEC headquarters.
Dr. Ghassan said the Madar system provides a state-of-the-art software application that enables the user to monitor his fleet on the digital map. A team of AEC’s engineers worked on the system in collaboration with their local GIS and communication partners. Together, they came up with a system highly rated in terms of accuracy, novel features and comprehensive after-sale support. He said a distinctive feature of the system was that it could be programmed to control the way the vehicles transmit the data either at fixed time intervals or fixed distances. By adding the web-enabled server, the user can track the fleet online from anywhere using the Internet. He could also download the data offline as a computer printout.
The work force of AEC is 76 percent Saudi. Asked if the high-salaried structure of their Saudi staff jacked up the cost of production, Dr. Ghassan replied that it was not so. Automation of the production lines, together with the company’s strategy for securing bulk orders, played an important role in cutting down the cost of production, he explained.
