Parkopedia Parking

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General Info

The name Parkopedia is a combination of the words parking and encyclopedia (think Wikipedia... but for parking!).

Born out of a frustration of looking for parking, we have set out to map and list every parking space in the world. To date, Parkopedia has grown to cover over 35 million parking spaces in 50 countries around the world...including China.

Use this app to

• Find parking using your current location or by entering an address

• Get directions straight to the space

• See parking space availability in real-time (where available)

• Find opening hours, up to date prices, payment methods and more

• Quickly narrow down parking choices using filters such as free, credit cards accepted, covered, etc

Nature of the problem or opportunity the system addresses

The system provides an intuitive in-car experience; allowing a driver to locate the most suitable parking location based on their current position, current destination or keyword based location search…..all from inside their car.

How the online/digital service improves on traditional approaches

Traditional car navigations systems to date haven't successfully tackled the problem of allowing the driver to easily search for and locate the best possible parking location for a particular journey.

To do this well requires an exhaustive database of parking locations as well as additional metadata such as real-time and historical space availability, payment costs and methods, possible height restrictions, opening hours, location of entrance and exists, disabled facilities, etc...

The Parkopedia Parking system provides this and more via access to Parkopedia's global database of parking locations, the biggest database of it's type in the world.

The type of system devised

The system is a standalone end-user Graphical User Interface application that is deployed and installed into in-car device.

The system provides the driver with the ability to query Parkopedia's online parking database in real-time and present the results in an intuitive and easily navigable way.

The system integrates with the car sensor data and has access to the vehicles position, navigation system destination and other additional metrics (e.g. vehicle height so that results for height restricted locations which would not be suitable for the current vehicle are not returned).

The development and launch process

The application has been developed completely using standard HTML5 integrated with the car’splatform software development kit (sdk) which exposes the vehicle metrics and navigation functionality.

Once installed, the application is available on the car head unit and can be launched via the installed Parkopedia icon.

The use of HTML5 as the base technology for the application means no special tooling was required to develop and build the application. The final asset packaging is performance via the sdk with the output then available for submission for publication.

Client and user experience

The execution of the application is performed by the car head unit with the application picked and launched on request from a list of platform installed applications.

On launch, the application allows easy querying for parking based on location or destination. If a soft or hard keyboard is available, keyword searching is enabled to allow the user to enter a search term of their choice.

Speech-to-Text is also available with the system decoding the user's voice search request and providing results based on the identified location.

Results are presented either as a list of parking spaces with associated distance and cost or as a map with all results plotted based on position and availability.

On selection of a particular space, additional detail is provided included a breakdown of the parking locations costs over time, payment methods, historical and real-time space availability (if available), contact address and telephone (including integration with the car's telephone system if available) plus a feature matrix showing additional data about the car park including availability of cctv, e-charge points, disabled facilities, whether overnight parking is possible, etc...

Ability to work across different platforms and systems.

The use of industry standard HTML5 for this application allows it to be easily adapted to other future systems making use of HTML as a presentation platform.

Benefits

Ability to easily locate the most suitable parking location based on requirements including distance, location, price, features and availability.

The net result provides instant cost savings with ability to compare pricing plus reduced time spent hunting for space availability.

It’s a safe way of looking for a parking space (speech-to-text means drivers do not need to look away from the road to type data into a system).

Drivers using mobile apps are then immediately directed to their chosen parking space; without the need to drive around looking for a space; thus reducing congestion, noise pollution and C02 emissions.

Details of how the technology and service is being future-proofed

The use of HTML5 and other standard web technologies future proofs this platform against upcoming technology changes for many years to come.