French Use Space Tech To Find Parking Spots 112
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."
Driving with smartphones? (Score:4, Interesting)
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!
Re:Driving with smartphones? (Score:4, Funny)
Simple solution, find park first then use smartphone to search for a park.
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France has had a ban on driving with a cell phone in hand for a while now.
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Re:Silly Drivers, Trix are for Kids (Score:4)
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In theory, a business would contract a towing company to promptly evacuate and impound any bad parkers. This would give the business a no nonsense reputation that would earn respect.
In practice, tolerating temporary bad parking may be a necessary evil on account of how much leverage a disgruntled driver can hold sway over the bottom line, so being a paying customer may well be grounds enough to demand the perk of being allowed to park screwy.
Ditto in Chicago, But Less French (Score:3, Funny)
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.
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Yeah, BWI has technology like this in the hourly garage, there are sensors above the parking spots that relay to a server that then displays the number of spots on each level and row that are available. Putting the program on a smartphone seems like the ultimate in ludicrous, I like having the numbers displayed on overhead signs as it allows you to not take your eyes off the road and pay attention to your driving. Plus, are smartphones really that common that everyone has them? Last I checked that is sti
Exploring Venus (Score:5, Funny)
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!
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That's what I thought when I read the headline. An Ion Cannon to blast cars that have overstayed their allotted time would be good too. No invasion of privacy then either - you can remain anonymous while you are blasted from space!
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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!
I think I know why they grounded the "Venus gig".
Can you imagine a connection Earth-Venus with coax cable to the server and the number of tower cells they need to build on Venus in the first place? Granted, "roaming fees" would probably be... well, astonomical... but not so many prospective customers, I think the ROI figures would have been abysmally low.
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Good luck finding a parking space cool enough to not melt your fancy NASA-designed spinner rims.
Re:Can they try using it to find razors? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Can they try using it to find razors? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Can they try using it to find razors? (Score:4, Funny)
If he wanted credit, he'd post with his username and call Americans fat and stupid. Modded +5 in no time.
I may be fat and stupid, but you
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If he wanted credit, he'd post with his username and call Americans fat and stupid. Modded +5 in no time.
Yes, but as an american he's too fat and stupid to realize that.
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As an Anonymous Coward American, I want to say that not all of us have forgotten the debt we owe to Lafayette.
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> not all of us have forgotten the debt we owe to Lafayette.
Sure ! Without him you would probably all still speak english.
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They have guns too, only dropped twice, never fired. Being descended from the French, I feel quite alright making jokes, laughing is the best medicine after all.
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Yup. And they held on to Vietnam (French Indochina) for much longer than the US did.
Interesting, (Score:2)
3000 sensors deployed used to monitor 15000 parking spaces... It would be interesting to find out how such buried sensors could do that.
Bad Article or Worst System Ever? (Score:4, Interesting)
"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.
Re:Bad Article or Worst System Ever? (Score:4, Funny)
They're very small parking spaces. Ever seen a French car?
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If I understand TFA correctly, these sensors act as a radar, except they analyze EM fields (which are distorted by metal cars) within the working radius
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Could this be used to monitor traffic flow too?
I have been thinking about how to implement an open source traffic monitoring system. The idea is that people can set one up at home and monitor the traffic outside, generating data that can be used by smart phones and web sites to show areas of congestion. At the moment we only get traffic flow data for major roads in the UK, but I noticed that in Japan they have data for main roads in cities as well.
Since we can't dig up the road I was thinking of using a web
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Like this [suso.com]?
I made that early last year. Doesn't work as well in low light but mostly during the day it works pretty well. The winter has screwed it up because of the lower sun angle.
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I should note that right now the image processing is turned off because it was just burning CPU and wasn't working well in the winter. I wrote the algorithms based on spring and summer images. ;-) During those times, its was probably about 80-90% accurate during the day.
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Nice, that is an impressive system. I think traffic monitoring might actually be a bit easier because you are only looking to track moving objects so a slowly changing background does not interfere with it. It doesn't even have to be that accurate because the data is averaged, so picking up cyclists or people crossing the road won't mess things up.
What software are you using?
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If you follow the link in TFA to the graphic you see that the sensors are placed in the parking lane at the side of the street and have a sensor every 9 inches (overkill).
So something is way off with the story or the graphic, because 3000 sensors spaced 9 inches apart cover less than half a linear mile.
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There seems to be some confusion because TFA doesn't cite its source [spiegel.de] correctly (emphasis mine).
A field test conducted outside the building located at 82 Boulevard Lascrosses demonstrates how the system will function. Here, sensors have been placed just below the surface of the road under half a dozen parking spaces. The high-tech probes, which are mounted 25 centimeters (9 inches) apart on a coaxial cable a hand's width under the bitumen
[...]
The information gathered is sent to a server, which can keep track of around 2,500 to 3,000 sensors.
So,
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300 meters is 984 feet, which they rounded to 980...
Hey (Score:2)
Same in SF (Score:5, Interesting)
We have a similar system in San Francisco:
http://sfpark.org/how-it-works/ [sfpark.org]
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But that requires one sensor for each parking spot, while this monitors changes in the electromagnetic environment to locate free spots further away as well. One sensor can take care of multiple spots.
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Sorry, wrong. It requires two.
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> Sorry, wrong. It requires two.
Whereas this French system puportedly requires one every nine inches.
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Maybe the French 'researchers' went on holiday and just copied ideas? This certainly is not NEWS to me....
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old news (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
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They have a similar system (with the lights) at a major shopping center here in Australia. Arrows on the ceiling indicate "dont go this way, no free parks" or "go this way, x parking spots free" and direct people to the nearest free space. Also has special indicators for wheelchair parking spots.
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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.
Hell, yeah... but was it developed originally for Venus exploration? Ehh?
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Sensors are sensors, what is so much harder about were they are buried?
If you have a block on a street that allows parallel parking but has no lines for specific spaces how do you determine if there is enough space available between cars for another car to park? This method allows for that. If you have a space that can fit three small cars or two large trucks you can't have a sensor for each individual spot since the parking situation is dynamic.
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But it does not involve usage of wireless technologies, smartphones, data plans, and other expensive personal gadgets and communication technologies that bring so much cash to our battling economy! And it's not hip!
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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.
A car that blocks a parking lot for a week forces dozens of short term parkers to search another five minutes for another lot.
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Re:Yeah, Right! (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, this is just an excuse for the government to have another electronic “eye” watching you all the frigging time.
The goal isn’t to eliminate wrongdoers, the goal is to monetize them more efficiently. If wrongdoers were eliminated, they wouldn’t make any money off parking tickets. It’s just the same argument as the red-light cameras, which my city has had for a while and is currently considering moving them to new intersections because hardly anyone runs the cameras any more. Mission accomplished – wait, these aren’t making any more money... problem? Only if your goal was to make money.
Of course if they move them, I’m sure the previously-monitored intersections will pretty quickly return to exactly as they were before the cameras were installed. If the goal is to cut down on T-bone accidents caused by red-light runners at intersections that are identified as particularly bad for this sort of thing, the cameras need to stay at those intersections, yeah? Moving the cameras to less-bad intersections simply to generate more revenue could actually result in people getting killed. Priorities? You bet.
Insanity (Score:2)
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 alread
higher price, or lower time. (Score:3)
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:
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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.
Hell, make it every 20 minutes. If you need to park on the street, then you need to go to one store and then leave. If you're going "shopping" then you need to park further away.
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In scenic Heidelberg ... (Score:3)
... 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.
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It would be easy enough to design a system that assigned your car a numbered spot. That way you could hit a single button (compact car / van) and know immediately (a) how to find your assigned parking spot (b) which you’d fit in, e.g. no vans parked on ends of rows, and (c) it’s more-or-less the most efficient parking spot (e.g. the computer prioritizes lower levels and spots near elevators). Reserved parking places would be immensely easy to handle, too (just have the computer handle it, and th
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In a lot of cities in the UK, the road signs directing people to the main car parks have vacancy numbers. It helps a lot.
Vacant Parking Detected! (Score:5, Funny)
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Kill yourself.
Coming soon to Toulouse (Score:2)
Is there a parking problem on Venus? (Score:2)
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.
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Yeah, I've never heard of a car that can drive on a ball of gas.
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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.
On the bright side: electric cars from renewable energy would be the choice (even if not because the pressure from environmental groups - btw, these groups would be themselves under a pressure 90 times the one on Earth).
Not only there's not enough oxygen [wikipedia.org] to burn fossil fuels, but the winds on Venus are rated a 300 km/h and the insolation value is almost twice [wikipedia.org] of the Earth's. Granted, no hydro, though.
.
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LOL, that does remind me though of when I visited a European country and the guy we were staying with was parking. Some guy in an orange reflective vest (I didn’t see any other official sort of mark on him) was walking up and down the rows of cars collecting money and slipping papers under the wipers of cars that had been paid for. I wondered (though I didn’t ask) how anybody knew whether the guy was legit or not.
Granted, I’ve heard stories about stuff like that (e.g. the guy who collected
Better Article describing the system (Score:2)
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.
Magnetic vehicle detectors from the 50s... (Score:2)
..are now "space technology"?
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useless (Score:2)
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."
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Try reading the spiegel article.
The linked article is fucking shit, so lets clear it up:
Two sensors per spot spaced 9 inches apart.
Server can currently track 2500 to 3000 sensors.
The system directs you to the empty spots within 300 m of where you are.
In the future they hope to monitor 15,000 space.
Or, you could park at the far end and walk (Score:2)
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!
Ripley: (Score:1)
Micro changes in air density, my ass!
"Space technology?" (Score:2)
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 [berkeley.edu] 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
Just put a webcam on the roof (Score:3)
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.
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Actually, with all these comments about parking lots, I hadn't noticed that the article is talking about a system for a whole city. In that case, it's actually a very good idea. Lots of streets with parking spaces in short supply, just look at your smart phone and it will immediately tell you which spot everybody is racing to :-)
Although maybe a realtime sattellite image would be even simpler, now that would be space tech :-)
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Space Technology? (Score:2)
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 c
Cannot Detect Motorcycles (Score:1)
Not unique. (Score:2)
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
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A couple of sensors 9 inches apart can cover an area within a radius of 980ft. That's why it is special - because you don't need one sensor for every space.
use the phone (Score:1)
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
Use it to set real-time meter prices! (Score:2)