ST Electronics has unveiled a new smart car park platform that runs on the company’s brand new cloud-based IoT platform designed for smart cities.
The Smart Car Park Platform, announced and showcased at CommunicAsia2017 in Singapore, is a cloud-based solution that leverages Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR), smart video analytics and mobile payment technologies to provide efficient and convenient car parking services for consumers, and cost savings for car park operators.
Many current car park systems offer access control via technologies via vehicle RFID tags, in-vehicle units or access control cards. ST Electronics is proposing to replace that with a cloud-based system using license-plate recognition technology, a CCTV camera and video analytics, eliminating the need to install any extra tech gadgets on the vehicle.
Drivers could access the carpark by using a mobile app that enables them to pay via a digital wallet. According to an ST Electronics spokesperson on the demo stand, the driver just registers with the parking app and selects their preferred digital wallet option. The car park app also allows drivers to access their transaction history.
The CommunicAsia demo showcases local payment options like NETS and EZ-Link, as well as international options like PayPass and PayWave. However, the spokesperson said the system can support pretty much any wallet service in any market – the car park operator just has to liaise with local payments providers to integrate them into the system.
The app also supports features like searching for available car park space, checking parking rates, booking a parking space in advance, navigation to the nearest available parking space, and a “find your car” function in case you forget where you park.
As for car park operators, ST Electronics says the Smart Car Park Platform offers them significantly lower costs in infrastructure and equipment set-up, as well as installation and maintenance, compared to the current systems installed in local car parks.
Because it’s cloud-based, the platform centralizes all car park operations and maintenance management, and provides an overview of the car park’s status and occupancy.
Powering the car park solution is ST Electronics’ new IoT platform, also announced at CommunicAsia.
The platform, WISX (short for “World of IoT – Sense & eXchange”), was developed to support IoT solutions for smart city initiatives, and promises to integrate multiple IoT solutions into a common intelligent multi-domain platform that facilitates data exchange and cross domain data analytic capabilities.
ST Electronics says the WISX IoT Platform “optimizes the management of cities by generating actionable insights for enhanced decision making from the data collected from individual IoT solutions. It also provides a platform for testing smart features of a living environment, enabling city planners to better understand what matters most to people.”
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