Parking Sensors to Take Pain Out of Finding a Space
IT’S a problem familiar to most of us: you circle for ages waiting to find a parking space and just when you’ve spotted one, someone else darts in first.
Now a “parking patch” could change that by bringing together wireless sensors and mobile apps to steer drivers towards those elusive vacant spots, while also allowing traffic wardens to home in on parking offenders.
Some local authorities have already started embedding radio frequency identification (RFID) tags in parking permits. But while this makes it easier for wardens to check their validity with a quick scan by a handheld reader, it does little else, says Adrian Bone, CEO of Deteq Solutions, a start-up that developed the new parking patch at the Sussex Innovation Centre in Brighton, UK. The real challenge lies in telling when a parking space is empty or occupied without having to fit a car with any special equipment, he says.