Implementation of an intelligent parking system

Project Title

Implementation of an intelligent parking system

Project Area of Specialization Internet of ThingsProject Summary

Everything is getting automated day by day. Parking is no exception. Smart Parking is the way of automating tasks in traditional parking. With this automation, a lot of improvement can be achieved concerning fuel consumption, an early finding of free slot, less time wastage, efficiency, and accuracy in fare calculation and collection. All these issues can be decreased a good deal with the efficient development of the Smart Parking System. After studying many methods, we have prepared a user-friendly solution to this problem with better efficiency. We are using the latest technologies to make it easier to find a free parking slot, secure online booking, or real-time monitoring for the driver through apps on both iOS and Android and fare calculation and collection concerning date or vehicle to the owner. We are proposing a unique and better way of fare payment in our system. The entrance of the vehicle (car or bike) will be automatic and the exit will have a guard on it whose only job is to collect the fare calculated by our system. Lastly, we will be incorporating electronic vehicles into our system so that our bookable slots could be used for them in the future as well. We are proposing to achieve all of this by using the Internet of Things (IoT), Digital Image Processing (DIP), Computer Vision (CV), Neural Networks (NN), Embedded Systems (ES), and Mobile/Desktop development.

Project Objectives

In the proposed system, our objective is to design the automation and efficiency for most of the tasks, if not all, in the modern-day parking system. We will design a solution, that will be secure and beneficial for both, the drivers and the owner of parking. We will keep in mind the future need for parking for EVs and will design a solution for them as well so that if in the future the need arises, our system can be of use for them as well.

The vehicle will be checked by the camera at the entrance. The number plate will be scanned along with the date and time of entrance, the nearest free slot to the gate & barcode of the slip. The slip will be automatically generated (if the free slot is available and the captured object is a vehicle). At the time of exit, the guard will scan the barcode (via an app using his phone camera, no need for a physical barcode scanner) and the fare of a parked vehicle will be shown. The guard will collect the fare. The parking owner will have a full record of how much fare should be collected and how many and types of vehicles were parked today or any day via the GUI application on the Desktop.

Real-Time Monitoring for free slots will be provided for Android as well as for iOS users will be provided. For authentication, login will be provided for the driver and guard. Only registered guards will be allowed to collect fares who is/are permitted by the owner (the owner can set or change their duty hours). The owner-side portal will be secured via a strong password (the owner can change it at any time).

Project Implementation Method

Our primary sources of system data are the live feed of the camera. There are three live feeds. One is from the entrance gate. One covers the entire parking area. They all are input into an image processing system which then applies the required processes to them. After getting the desired data, the cloud database is updated accordingly.

Benefits of the Project

We have designed our system in such a way if implemented will have benefits for both the drivers and the parking owner. We are not using any dedicated sensors for free slot identification, rather using pre-installed security camera footage. It will provide a better idea of object type and have accuracy in free slot identification. Our system accommodates both types of users regardless of iOS or Android. The owner will have better control over our system as he can control the collection of fares. Our booking mechanism will be designed in such a way that in the future EVs would be able to integrate easily. Our on-spot fare collection will incorporate the traditional method while maintaining the automated nature of the system.

Technical Details of Final Deliverable

Digital Image Processing will help us to perform actions on images to improve their result so that our computer vision algorithms can easily get the desired information from them. We will be using the OpenCV library for the implementation of DIP in our system. OpenCV has a wide range of DIP functions and algorithms already developed in it.

Development of Free Slot Algorithm:

This stage took most of the project time. As we were finding free slots using computer vision techniques, we could not find a solution that fulfilled our requirements. We searched for the optimal solution which would be cost-effective as well as easy to implement. But it was very hard to find. Most of the solutions involved the use of GPU-intensive algorithms which were hard to implement for us.

Final Deliverable of the Project HW/SW integrated systemCore Industry ITOther IndustriesCore Technology Internet of Things (IoT)Other TechnologiesSustainable Development Goals Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure, Sustainable Cities and CommunitiesRequired Resources

Item Name	Type	No. of Units	Per Unit Cost (in Rs)	Total (in Rs)
			Total in (Rs)	5150
ESP32s	Equipment	2	800	1600
LCDs	Equipment	2	190	380
Servos	Equipment	4	200	800
Breadboards	Equipment	2	100	200
jumper wires	Equipment	8	90	720
hard wires	Equipment	10	30	300
soldering iron	Equipment	1	500	500
soldering wire	Equipment	4	100	400
printing model	Miscellaneous	5	50	250