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French Use Space Tech To Find Parking Spots
itwbennett writes "Using technology developed by French space agency CNES (Centre Nationale d'Etudes Spatiales) to explore the planet Venus, drivers in the city of Toulouse are discovering something much more down-to-earth: vacant parking spots. The system is based on 3,000 sensors buried just under the pavement that detect changes in the electromagnetic environment around them and communicate the results via coaxial cable to a server, which makes the information available in real time to drivers' smartphones."
I wonder whether Toulouse has laws against using your smartphone while driving -- this could be a nice income source for the municipality as well, staking out the parking spots with hidden cameras!
What about those guys that take two (or more) spots?
We have the same thing at some commuter train parking lots in the Chicago area. Between two lots I know of, they combine for over 3,000 spots. And we didn't need freakin' NASA to create the technology
Ours are better here because they are not so outrageously French.
"If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid." - Epictetus
So the plan is to explore Venus by burying sensors around the planet and detecting when something parks on top of them?
At least the pioneers will be able to locate a parking spot quickly!
Then they can shave those bushes. Alternatively, use it to find a backbone.
3000 sensors deployed used to monitor 15000 parking spaces... It would be interesting to find out how such buried sensors could do that.
No sig. Move along - nothing to see here.
We have a similar system in San Francisco:
http://sfpark.org/how-it-works/
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
They have had something like this at BWI for years. Even better - you don't have to look at your phone while driving. There are red and green lights marking open spots and the number of free spaces listed at the head of each row.
Similarly, the parking structure at the Grove in LA lists the number of free spaces per floor.
I don't buy it for a minute. If it was really about "reducing pollution" they wouldn't be going after "illegal long term parkers" because after all a car that is turned off generates no exhaust fumes. This is just another revenue ploy.
Parking spots in most cities in the world are scarce because they are priced well below what they are worth. By letting demand set the price (i.e. raise it dramatically) you deal with several problems all in one fell swoop:
- parking unavailability
- people polluting the air and causing congestion endlessly circling for a cheap/free spot
- enforcement of time limits currently in place for free spots
- using space age technology to detect free spaces
The tech sounds neat but it's just over-complicating an already over-complicated situation.
... the parking lots have displays showing how many spots are still free. When you drive in and get your ticket, the number is decremented. When you drive out, putting the paid ticket back into the machine, it gets incremented. Very simple and effective. However, you need to be physically close to the parking lot to see the display. But I'm not sure if I want a bunch of folks fiddling with their smart phones, while trying to drive as well.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Step on it Pierre, no time Toulouse!
"The 3,000 sensors, buried about nine inches apart, are able to pinpoint open parking spots within 980 feet"
Something doesn't seem right about that.
DDoP (Distributed Denial of Parking) attacks -- the ultimate in dick driving!
"Liberty may be endangered by the abuses of liberty as well as the abuses of power." -- James Madison
Is there a parking problem on Venus? I would have thought that there was plenty of room, given how few cars are designed to operate in such a hostile environment.
disclaimer : I'm a municipal elected official, and we just had the local planning board (which covers two counties) for a parking study.
The trick is, you want to have open parking spaces, because open spaces mean that people can use the shops, but you don't want to make it so that people park for too long in the prime spots. So, you have to go to tiered pricing with different time limits:
Sometimes you don't need to raise prices, you just need to lower the time limit ... we've got a few shop owners who park their vehicles on main street as there's 2 hour meters with no limit on time ... but I'm guessing they'd be less likely to hog those spots if they had to go out every hour to feed the meters, even if the rates per hour were the same.
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
Not as cool as... http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-birmingham-11423324
We've had a system here for ages which uses under-bay sensors (technology as old as mud) and green lights above each bay (technology even older).
You can see the lights from a hundred metres away and you don't need a smartphone.
But of course what we need is more drivers looking at their smartphones instead of the road...
TANG! Kids use space tech for their morning drink!
You want parking spot? I have parking spot.
Good spot cost you fifty dollars. Great spot one hundred dollars.
OK, you want Great spot. Here is location.
You meet my cousin Dimitri there and give him this.
He is large man with baseball bat standing next to cement brick.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/0,1518,723162,00.html
Much better article. The sensors detect a vehicle parked immediately above it, not 900ft away.
..are now "space technology"?
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
i need a parking SPOT, not the parking LOT - WTF 980 feet... sensors 9 inches apart.. that many sensors and you cant come closer than a quarter mile?
"The 3,000 sensors, buried about nine inches apart, are able to pinpoint open parking spots within 980 feet and send an alert to a server, which makes the information available in real time to drivers using a special app on their smart phones."
I park at the far end and walk a bit further. I don't waste time chasing spaces, and I get a little exercise. I don't pay for a gym membership either.
If you want to employ multibillion dollar tech to solve this "huge problem", be my guest. Sheesh!
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Micro changes in air density, my ass!
I don't see what's so great about this. They have to bury a huge number of sensors in pavement, and they're wired devices; they are all on a coax cable. Buried cables in pavement are a huge maintenance headache. Freeze/thaw cycles and traffic pressure damage the cables over time.
UC Berkeley has developed a wireless sensor for such applications. It's an extremely low power device powered by the compression of the pavement as cars go by.
But the real competition is cameras. In the last ten years, the trend in California has been to replace traffic sensing loops with cameras and video processing. One camera can replace the loops for all lanes on an intersection face. Electronics is cheaper than all the pavement-cutting and wiring needed to get the traffic loops wired back to the controller. Finding open spaces in big outdoor parking lots can be done with a small number of cameras.
Seriously, this would be such an incredibly simple, cheap and useful solution: For every large open parking lot, put a webcam on a roof or nearby antenna. When you arrive at the parking lot, a quick look on your smartphone will immediately show you where the open spots are. No need for sensors (which are expensive, will fail regularly, and may not detect small and/or incorrectly parked vehicles, motorcycles,...), no complicated connections with underground coax cables, no expensive maintenance. Just one webcam, connected to some small server which is connected to the internet.
Of course indoor parking lots would be more difficult, sensors are probably a better bet there. But then you can use much simpler detectors, for example optical ones mounted on the roof.
If I understand the technology employed here, it is the same tech my corner stop light uses to detect cars waiting for the light to change, only instead of using the data on car presence to influence a stop light, they are using coaxial cable to send the info to a server which makes it available to a web server... All of this is fairly common technology - you can literally find most if not all of it on any major intersection in America.
Oh but wait, your smartphone is using it's GPS to determine where your car is, and while I guess that is 'technically' space technology (it involves geosynchronous satellites to determine position of the device), it isn't really so fantastical, people have been using the same technology to 'geotag' family snapshots for years on their iPhones...
Ken
3,000 French sensors can't be wrong!
Unless this is a serious improvement over the sensors used in US roadways its going to have a problem detecting motorcycles. Most have too little metal to set off the sensors, which is why you sometimes see bikers parking their bikes, and running over to hit the walk button.
Interesting, but it doesn't sound particularly unique. I know of several companies which feature very similar technology. Actually, this one company in particular pairs it up to parking meters that allow the city to track if parked cars have paid for the spot or if they're in violation. That's not something your average person looks forward to, but they do also allow for the opportunity to inform drivers of open spots, as well as letting you know that your meter is about to expire.
I'm also not sure why this system's sensors need to be buried so closely together (9" apart) and apparently aren't connected to individual parking spaces. So presumably there's some level of extra complexity here in order for this to work. The ones I've seen feature a small unit under each parking spot. Each sensor corresponds to a specific spot which seems more logical to me. But for all I know the technology is a lot more similar than the article would indicate.
if all parking spots were allocated by a computer system. We can remove all the parking meters also.
Nav system can find you a parking spot from the system.
What is required is all spots managed by the system require the allocation from the system before use.
There can be police to maintain the rule, or remote control blocker to enforce the rule.
Parking meters can be remove too, the system can also accept payments while allocating the parking spot.
contact kentsin@yahoo.com if want more
Instead of sending the info to people's smartphones, the city should use it to adjust the rates for parking meters to reflect real-time demand. When the parking spot vacancy rate falls below 15%, increase the meter rates, and if the vacancy rate rises above 15%, decrease the meter rates. You'll never have to worry about finding a parking spot again, and you'll always be able to park close enough to right outside your destination. Parking spots are a scarce resource, and we usually ration scarce resources via price, not queuing. Strangely it's only with roads we tolerate queuing instead of price, both for driving (waiting in traffic jams) and parking (circling the block).