The Internet of Things (IoT) enables the interrelation of physical things and devices that can be accessed through the internet and it simply forms a single integrated network of various things. An IoT-facilitated smart city scenario spans several sectors, such as industrial applications, public transportation, smart grid, emergency services, health care, etc. In this paper, we propose an Intelligent Proficient Data Collection Approach (IPDCA) to deliver public data in a large-scale smart city set-up. IPDCA utilizes public vehicles as the mobile data collectors (D-collectors) that read (or collect) data from multiple Access Points (APs) and send them back to the central Base Station (BS). Moreover, IPDCA adopts a modified Bat algorithm for path finding of D-collectors, where we extend the Bat algorithm to solve our discrete optimization problem. Besides, for selecting D-collectors in smart city settings, we use a multi-objective fitness function that considers the count, travelled distance, and storage of D-collectors to ensure optimal use of resources. Efficiency of the proposed mechanism is proved through simulations. View Full-Text