Slovenian City Transforms Parking with AI-Enabled Cameras

a city in Slovenia has transformed the way drivers park using displays like this to highlight the available spaces it's a system credited with cutting traffic reducing pollution and streamlining parking operations and it took just two weeks get up and running deploying such a solution it's very fast it's not expensive at all that's the magic of IOT a more specifically software using cameras like this. They are installed at different locations in the city. I think there are about 15, 20 cameras in different locations, mostly on light bulbs. They have been installed by a local system integrator, which is Akoda. And then this camera simply takes snapshots every minute and they send the snapshots to the software. Andrea Frassati is the co-founder and CEO of Parkery that's the company behind the software which uses an algorithm to detect cars in the snapshots taken by the camera it happens in real time in some cases results are analyzed inside the camera using edge computing in other cases they're sent to the cloud either Parkery's or the customers in the city of Targis in Slovenia the cameras send data using an LTE network to the local telecoms cloud and from there the information gets posted on display boards in the lots so what are the costs associated with your solution let's say normally if we host the project on our own cloud we offer just a monthly fee per parking space very straightforward no additional cost no setup cost it's just a certain fee for each parking spot for every month whereas if the project is instead hosted at a client so So either at the edge or on -premise, they can also go for a longer commitment, so they just pay a one -off fee and then they simply have a license that they get on top of which we charge software maintenance. And why would Citi not want its data managed in your cloud? Data protection and privacy, so even though the images that we use do normally not contain any personal data, so spaces are never- visible nor are license plates it's mostly also from a public perception point of view also from a client perception that they simply have their own images processed on their own server the images never leave their own network they stay there so we must obey uh uh european law of privacy and of course we must fulfill a lot of paper we must sign a lot of agreements and the most important is that the airway connection is encrypted. These type of precautions are unique to an image detection system, but advocates say the extra work up front has a bigger payoff than alternatives like ground sensors. Ground sensors are placed on each space in order to gather accurate data. They avoid a lot of the privacy issues, but they're more susceptible to pricey maintenance issues. After one year, of pilot projecting and looking for right solution we find out that this sensor solution is not okay for this environment because we have a very harsh winter and the sensors usually stopped working after a couple of months. The first phase of this project consisted of eight cameras developed by AXIS. ParkGree's software was installed in each camera and then Acoda, a systems integrator in Slovenia, fused the results from Parkery software into display boards on site. The second phase of the project was completed in September 2021. It consisted of more cameras covering more space and a third phase is planned for next year. And what makes this project particularly interesting is the way the solution covers not only open spaces but on the street curb parking as well. After one year, we have 350 parking lots covered by video detection and we hope that in a couple of months we have additional 150 parking lots covered. So the city is Teržić which has approximately 10 ,000 parking lots is completely covered by this and they found We found out that some cars were parking there for weeks and they even not noticed. And after when this system starts to fully operate, there is suddenly a lot of free space. Now, researchers to the smart parking market say the industry is set to see significant growth in the coming years, up to $19 billion in 2028, up from $5 billion in 2021. Software is expected to see significant growth over that period this is a number of cars on the road are expected to rise globally many of which will be electric and parkoury believes that will open up even more opportunities for its solution it's quite clear that at the moment it's not a problem but it will become in the future of a car staying for too long at the charging station or non -electric car occupying charging stations at the moment let's say There are not so many electric cars yet, so normally there is no space problem, or you can very often find an available charging station for you, but this will obviously become more and more of a problem. And that's why we are getting in touch with many EV providers to help them starting to manage these EV charging stations, because we can easily tell them, well, you know. charging station is occupied by a car or not and then by cross-checking our data with their own charging data they can know in real time if a car is there without charging which is actually what they would like to avoid. For more coverage on the smart parking market be sure to stick with Current Insights if you have a question or story hit the button below.