Cars are getting smarter each and every time, every year more and more car makers are focusing on new technology and the results are starting to take shape. Think self driving cars who can drive and park themselves and now, even help each other find parking. I can imagine the scene in i-Robot becoming a reality. Well, not the robots anyway.
BMW is now researching the Dynamic Parking Prediction project, a solution that will in future be able to shorten the search for vacant on-street parking, particularly in cities. Together with its partner INRIX, a world-leading provider of transportation intelligence and connected car services, BMW will present a research prototype of this application at TU-Automotive Detroit (formerly Telematics Detroit), one of the world’s leading connected car fairs, from 3 – 4 June 2015. The system will be displayed in a BMW i3.
The new research project Dynamic Parking Prediction is able to predict parking availability using movement data from vehicle fleets. In a way, this is basically crowd sourcing information from vehicles about. In theory this works well but take up is key and only having this technology in BMW cars may not necessarily be the best way forward. The application is able to shorten the search for vacant on-street parking, particularly in cities, and provides an effective way of reducing parking-related traffic. In some sort
BMW and INRIX team up to develop a production-ready system.
BMW will present a research prototype of this on-street predictive parking application at one of the world’s leading connected car fairs, TU-Automotive Detroit. The new system will be displayed in a BMW i3 at the INRIX booth on 3 and 4 June 2015. INRIX and BMW will be pooling their expertise to further refine the research prototype for use in production vehicles.“There is a clear demand from customers living in large cities for a system capable of predicting on-street parking availability. Through its collaboration with INRIX, the BMW Group aims to continue setting the benchmark in urban mobility into the future. We are starting from an excellent baseline, since most of our vehicles are already equipped with connected technology ex factory” says Martin Hauschild, Head of Traffic Technology and Traffic Management at the BMW Group.
The interesting part is that if BMW were to create an open API whereby this technology can be shared by all other car makers, then crowd sourcing information such as parking or other things such as traffic jams and road closures will be a lot better.
