In Finland, outdoor and roadside parking has not evolved much. Typically, one drives around for an indeterminate amount of time until a free parking lot is located, parks the vehicle, walks to a payment machine, pays for an estimated parking duration using coins or a card, prints a ticket and displays it on the dashboard inside the car. Parking attendants patrolling these areas look out for parking violations.

This is a sub-optimal system, particularly given the snowy and wintry conditions much of the country is exposed to, from October until May. During wintery conditions, dashboard visibility is often obscured owing snow covering the car, or frozen ice on the windshield.

This project derives a next-generation open-space parking system for city-wide use based on vehicle telemetry, location-based applications, short range low power technologies and cloud-based predictive computations.

Usage for drivers :

Usage for parking attendants :

• The driver and vehicle can use BLE-based beacons and GPS-enabled smartphones to locate available parking places, communicate with nearby smart meters for payment while providing accurate details.
• Simplifying the verification of a vehicle’s parking validity, by equipping parking attendants with portable equipment or smartphones communicating with nearby parking meters and vehicles with BLE beacons.
• Assisting city planning as well as drivers on occupancy of public roadside or open-air parking areas, using a cloud-based data tool for predictive analysis. sensors using either a WiFI or Bluetooth relay.