A Smart Parking Application with Bosch

A reliable LoRaWAN® based solution to detect parking occupancy

Make traffic flow more smoothly, reducing the time taken to find a parking space

Bosch® developed a smart parking system whereby the Parking Lot Sensor (PLS) detects and reports parking space occupancy, thus enabling active parking lot management features, such as search, navigation and reservation.

The aim was to improve a number of shortcomings in traditional parking management:

  • Finding a Space: In busy urban environments the average time spent searching for a parking space often takes in excess of 20 minutes. Through guided parking the team at Bosch wanted to reduce the average search time by 35% with the added benefit of less CO2 emissions.
  • Enforcement: the system should also aid ticket harvesting and enforcement (identify overstays and illegal parking e.g.emergency access zone) to minimize the occurrence of missed parking space rent and high associated costs of manually ensuring compliance with parking regulations.
  • eCharging: Improve the availability of eCharging stations by reducing the level of overstays at eCharging stations.
  • Private Parking: Facilitate greater sharing of private parking spaces (e.g. shops at daytime and restaurants at night) and provide solutions to offer and bill private parking space.
  • Monitoring: Improve capacity planning by facilitating traffic modelling and simulation through the statistical frequency measurement of parking lots (e.g. identify parking hot spots).
Main project requirements

Bosch were set the challenge of developing a fast, reliable and real-time monitoring solution to detect and manage parking space occupancy

In need of a similar solution? Interested in what we do?

OUR SOLUTION

The cross company team developed an end to end solution to setup and manage parking sensors based upon: Bosch providing the parking sensors technology. A2A Smart City providing the network server and backend API, and Arduino providing the application server to manage the parking sensors and their data.

Arduino supported the Software aspects of the project through the:

  • UX review and customization on managing a parking sensor;
  • Frontend and backend development
  • Storage of images
  • Application hosting under create.arduino.cc
  • Seamless integration with Arduino Cloud
  • Endpoint to upload custom image with map
  • Interface to add parking points
  • Visualization layer with updated information on the parking status and sensor info

The resulting IoT smart parking solution was designed for detecting with the highest reliability if a parking lot is occupied or available. It utilizes the discretionary LoRaWAN® protocol for wireless communication and can therefore be integrated easily into any Smart City project.

Example: Mantua, Italy

Where Bosch parking lot sensors have been installed in parking areas to monitor and inform drivers in real time about the availability of parking spaces in the city centre. Resulting in the traffic flowing more smoothly, reducing the time taken to find parking and ensuring greater transparency and accuracy in the payment of parking fees.