Three trends to watch out for in the smart parking space in 2018 [Native]

The Consumer Electronics Show (CES), which kicked off yesterday and runs until Friday (12 January), is 0ne of the world’s biggest trade shows and is a window into upcoming tech and trends,

This year the conference will feature a focus on Smart Cities. Scheduled events include a Smart Cities Marketplace, so expect to see a lot of new tech innovation around public safety, energy consumption, mobility and parking assistance.

The conference’s organisers, the Consumer Technology Association predicts global spending on smart cities will reach $34-billion by 2020. With such a big market up for grabs, major companies like Ericsson and Deloitte — which will be exhibiting at the conference — are hard at work developing smart city solutions.

Will we see the hybrid smart parking sector adopting crowd-sourcing, AI and machine learning technologies in 2018?

Crowd-sourced parking intelligence

Bosch is expected to showcase connected and automated parking solutions at CES 2018. One of these, community-based parking, leverages on connected vehicles and the power of the cloud to enable users to gather information on available parking as they drive along.

This information is then relayed to the cloud where it can be accessed by other users looking for parking, allowing them to navigate to free parking spaces. Bosch claims the solution can save up to €500 euros a year and effectively reduces parking searches by about 30 minutes.

Indian research firm Market Research Future estimates that the hybrid smart parking market alone will grow to about $2.1-million by 2023. What other trends can you expect in this niche sector in 2018, outside of the ones to be showcased at CES?

Cryptowallet payments for parking

NetObjex , a US-based Internet of Things (IoT) and blockchain company, has come up with an interesting use-case for the blockchain — a decentralised smart parking payment solution that uses cryptocurrency.

In a demonstration late last year, the startup showcased how the tech could be used to allow cars to autonomously pay for parking.

As the debate over the future of cryptocurrencies rages on, could this be the way we might be paying for parking in the next coming years?

Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning

As in other sectors, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning have made their way into the smart parking space. Streetline, a US-based startup, has a parking management platform that uses machine learning to generate real-time parking guidance and analytics data.

This article was brought to you by Parkfind.

Featured image: Free photos via Pixbay