The parking lots and garages industry seems unchanged over the years, the business model is similar for different parking lots: someone is opening the ticket for you to get in, you get in and park your car, and when you leave, you pay to the fee collector… Yet, in this world of 5G and AI technology, there are some breakthrough technologies that could be applied in the parking lots and help enhance the business model and make it more efficient.
Smart Parking in Hong Kong
There are already some shopping malls that enhance their parking experience with the use of different technologies. e-PARKING by Mira Place is an example. Within the Mira Place application, an e-PARKING system is installed and the mall members may reserve parking spaces in it. Once the members link their licenses with the application, they may check the availability of parking spaces and make reservations.
Once the reservation is confirmed, the touch-free access system of the parking lot allows the car owners to get in without doing anything. A camera linked with the computer vision system is installed at the entrance to keep track of the license plate of the cars. If the license plate recognized matches the license number of the reserved car owner, the gate will automatically open for the driver, so that the driver may get in without the trouble of tapping their octopus card or credit card.
With the help of computer vision, the cameras above may track down the availability of the parking spaces by recognition. If there is a vehicle inside the parking space, the AI will automatically realize that the space is occupied. Hence, the real-time parking status can be provided to the monitor at the entrance, as well as on the reservation function of the Mira Place application. Yet, to avoid misrecognition, the computer vision system needs to keep learning with new data. If the data is insufficient, the system might recognize people or any large objects as vehicles. Therefore, more images of vehicles should be captured for the AI to learn, so as to improve its recognition ability.
Since the reservation records are kept by the system, car owners may search for their cars with the application, without memorizing the location of the cars. Also, with the linked credit cards or Octopus cards on the application, car owners may finish payment on the application, so that they can leave the mall directly, without having to stop at the gate and tapping the Octopus. The application will also keep track of the parking record and total spent in the mall to let the users redeem free parking hours from the loyalty program.
From reservation to leaving, the whole process is touchless and smooth, and the use of computer vision AI and other IoT technologies enhanced the parking experience of the customers. Adding the linkage to the loyalty program, the whole shopping experience at Mira Place will be enhanced and the customers will be more willing to shop at Mira Place.
A futuristic way of parking: Automatic Robotic Parking
Apart from the existing smart parking solutions of the shopping malls, Hong Kong Science Park is actually developing an automatic robotic parking system. An automatic guided vehicle (AGV) is built in the parking lot, all the car owners need to do is to drive their cars on the AGV, then it will automatically search for available parking space, transport the car and place the car on the empty parking space.
To ensure safety, a motion sensor is installed on the AGV to detect if there is any human or pet remaining on the car before it is transferred to the parking spaces, the sensor will also detect the surrounding of the AGV to see if there is any obstacle, if there is any object that block the way, the AGV will automatically stop and the standby staff will be notified to clean up the objects. In this case, the car owners may handover their cars to the automatic parking lot with peace of mind.
When the car owners are about to leave, they do not have to look for their cars all over the parking lot, they only have to input the one-time password sent to their registered mobile phone, then the AGV will transport their cars back to the entrance for the owners.
The automatic robotic parking technology is still at its trial stage, but with its automatic double parking feature, if the technology can be widely launched in Hong Kong, the problem of insufficient parking space can be alleviated. Let’s hope the automatic parking technology can be developed maturely in the near future, so that there will be a breakthrough in the parking lots and garage industry.
Automation of car categorization
For a lot of parking lots, the price is varied for different types of vehicles, the parking fee for a mid-sized vehicle might be higher than a regular private car. In this case, there will be a need to have a parking attendant in the security stand to recognize the vehicles one by one, and then decide how much should the parking fee. Except for high labor costs, if the parking attendant needed to check the vehicles one by one, the car owners will have to wait for confirmation before getting into the parking lot, and the whole operation process will hence be slowed down.
Computer vision technology would be helpful in dealing with the bottleneck. A computer vision system allows the AI to learn automatically from a database of images, if the parking lot collects enough photos of different vehicle types, the system is able to categorize the captured images and elaborate the suitable parking fee for the car owners. If the camera is installed at the entrance, the vehicle type can be recognized immediately when the car is entering the parking lot, which would help fasten the parking process.
Motherapp is now working on a computer vision project for parking use. If you would like to learn more about computer vision and other new technologies, feel free to visit our website for more insight and case studies. If you are up for consultation, feel free to also contact our sales team.