Parking Locator - BackgroundSome years back, drivers in cities around the world started seeing a welcome development in traffic management: outdoor displays with the names of nearby parking lots and the number of empty spaces in them. But what about street parking? Or what happens if the driver missed the outdoor display? And where exactly, are those spaces located? With 30% of the time we spend driving being wasted on finding parking, these are not idle questions. To answer these questions a three major steps need to be taken:
The first and the last of these steps are reasonable straight-forward; the second one however, presents quite a challenge. Any number of sensors can be embedded in the pavement or the parking structure that can detect whether a car is present or not, that takes care of the first step. Increasing number of drivers have GPS enabled devices and mobile phones that can accept communications and display it on a map; that takes care of the third step. A solution to connect the sensor to the information network however, must overcome some significant challenges. Until recently, thinking of developing a system that could provide this information was the stuff of fantasy mainly because the technology to identify which parking spot was open was too expensive, too cumbersome, too unreliable, or simply unavailable. Until recently. Enter the Universal Parking Locator The Universal Parking Locator solution deploys sophisticated sensors at street level that can detect whether a car is present or not. Miltel's Bridgeware connects the sensors to a local data gateway and from there to backend servers for analysis and publication. All the driver sees, are simple notations on a GPS display, letting him or her know where available parking can be found. (insert here mock up of map with available parking noted). |