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  The purpose of the AGS System is to provide the software for an entirely self-sufficient automated gas station which obviates the necessity for the presence of service personnel on-site. The overall design integrates the three main components of the system:

1) Pump Interaction Module: This consists of the physical pumps, embedded microcontroller systems to handle transactions processed via credit card, bank card or via Petro 451's proprietary fuel card payments as well as to perform validation checks on the card supplied by the customer. While the specifications for this portion of the system are supplied in our overall design document (enclosed), the majority of the work for this section has been contracted out to a third-party hardware manufacturer.

2) The Head Office module allows a user from the head office to log into the system in order to perform various configuration and/or validation functions. This functionality also includes generating reports on demand (rather than via batch processing) as well as permitting a delivery person to process deliveries of fuel to the various main tanks at the station. This module is divided up into four components: Deliveries, Administration, Station Operations and Reports. Together these components interact extensively with the Batch Processing (database) module.

3) Batch Processing Module: This module handles all of the data storage/management functions of the system. All of the data that needs to be stored in order to generate reports (Transactions, Rejected Credit Cards, Deliveries, Statistics) is maintained by the Batch Processing component. This data is used to generate batch reports. There is also a configuration data interface for use by the Head Office interactive module.

Important considerations for the implementation of this system include the robustness, security and ease of use of the system in an fully automated environment.

Author : Marcos Lopez | Phong Tu | Vald Levin