An optical and magnetic sensor developed by the UPC (Barcelona Tech), which will start to be tested in the 22@ district of Barcelona, allows users to find available parking spaces in real time. This will ease traffic congestion in cities.
The system, which will be marketed by the company Urbiòtica, is pioneering in that it combines for the first time an optical sensor, using very low energy consumption, with a magnetic sensor that has higher energy needs. The majority of systems currently being tested use solely the latter.
Ramon Pallàs, who is in charge of the research at the Universitat Politècnica, has explained in a press conference that with this mechanism drivers will be able to know in real time, using a GPS navigation system, mobile telephone or other device, where to find an available parking space in the area where they are driving.
Further, the system will permit the panels indicating the type of spaces available–in Barcelona parking spaces are divided into green zones and blue zones–to be electronic and specify how many free spaces there are on a particular street. In this way, unnecessary trips around the block can be avoided, thus reducing congestion in cities where it is estimated that 40% of all vehicles in circulation are looking for a place to park.
The innovative feature of this system devised by Barcelona Tech, which is currently being patented, is that it uses an optical sensor which is always active. This determines when a vehicle is on top of it by evaluating the light or shade that it receives. In order to confirm that the occlusion is produced by a vehicle–and not by a leaf from a tree, a piece of paper or any other object–the magnetic sensor is activated which then definitively confirms the presence or absence of a parked car. With this double system of sensors, the researchers have managed to get around one of the major inconveniences encountered by the methods now being tested in other parts of the world: systems relying solely upon magnetic sensors, which are permanently activated, consume much more energy and have a useful life of only five years. With this new system, the autonomy of the installed cylinders containing the sensors could be almost unlimited, though in practice they will have a useful life of around ten years, which is the average length of time between road resurfacings.