Smart parking is an efficient and cost-effective system to monitor the availability of parking spaces in real-time. Technologies such as sensors and cameras detect free parking spaces and direct drivers to the most convenient spot via digital signage such as LED-displays. By leveraging the power of artificial intelligence, edge computing, and interconnectivity, the complexity of driving in a complicated environment is simplified.

Benefits of smart parking solutions

Smart parking solutions not only significantly minimize search traffic, but also help ease congestion in cities and reduce vehicle emissions. Finding a free parking space easily in an often-confusing commercial car park enhances customer experience, thus improving revenue. Simultaneously, parking operators and civic authorities can gather intelligent data on parking and customer habits that can be used to drive future infrastructure developments.

Generating data easily

Data is generated via in-ground sensors that have to be installed in each parking space or via Overhead sensors as developed by Cleverciti. The latter can be easily mounted on existing infrastructure such as lampposts or buildings and provide a comprehensive real-time overview of the occupancy status of up to 100 parking spaces per sensor.

Overhead sensors scan the vicinity and identify the position of a parked car or an empty parking space while also measuring the length of an available parking space and registering whether vehicles have been in an illegal space (e.g. in front of a fire hydrant or other no-parking zone).

The data gathered by these sensors is transmitted via cellular (LTE), Wi-Fi or wired Internet connection. The best smart parking solutions process data “at the edge”, which means the only data leaving the sensor itself is the GPS coordinates of a parking space and its availability. This approach ensures compliance with all the relevant data privacy regulations.

Real-time parking information

Relevant insights can then be passed on to drivers via a mobile application, website or digital signage. LED displays such as Cleverciti’s Circ360™ and Circ180™, both of which are multi-directional LED signs that can be installed on existing lampposts, show live parking information and messaging. 

Parking meters can be integrated into the system, showing parking operators whether time-limits are being observed.

See how smart parking works in a city environment in the video below:

Interested in learning more about smart city parking solutions? Click the button below to schedule a demo with a smart parking expert now.

Here we are: the biggest yearly spending event in retail is here off, with holiday shopping efforts in full force. But while consumers battle with their checkbooks, retailers are batting for consumers. You’ve likely noticed that the news is scattered with stories about big box stores closing while online retail giants, such as Amazon, continue to grow. In fact, consumers spent a whopping $126 billion online in the 2018 holiday shopping season.

An NPR poll brings insight to the online versus brick-and-mortar war that has ensued, featuring the top motivating factor to shopping online: speed (quickly followed by convenience). When you think about physically going to a store to shop, these factors are often diminished by one major element: parking. But what if retailers could leverage technology to both decrease the time shoppers spend searching for a space and provide a better customer experience? Could this help push customers to return to in-store shopping?

Our customers think so, based on the following benefits:

Speed

Research shows that finding a parking spot at a shopping center can take up to 12 minutes. Cleverciti’s smart parking technology can change that. Through a combination of real-time detection of available parking spaces and digital signage guiding drivers to open spots, the time required to park can be reduced by 30% or more. In a shopping mall with 1,000 parking spaces, this improvement can result in annual revenue gains of more than $4 million.

A positive impression

As the first and last memory of a shopping experience, streamlined parking is key to creating a satisfied customer. Take it from us: In July, Cleverciti finished installing its smart parking technology at Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield’s Ruhr Park, Germany’s largest open-air shopping center with more than 2,600 parking spots. Known for their devotion to innovation and service, Ruhr Park’s executive team wanted to deliver extraordinary service, convenience, and a hassle-free parking experience for its clients.

Creating rewards

In addition to streamlining parking, Cleverciti’s newest technology, the Cleverciti Card, can be used to reserve parking spots in specified areas. Imagine VIP customers being able to reserve a space in advance, which not only maximizes their time spent shopping, but also provides additional data to the retailer regarding the most loyal and top-spending customers, allowing salespeople to know in advance of the arrival of their best customers. For years, brands have created loyalty programs with rewards, bonuses and discounts, and now parking can become part of these efforts.

Utilizing data

Cleverciti’s solution is more than just sensors. Using edge-computing, artificial intelligence and the Internet of Things (IoT), the technology creates a unified and intelligent platform that provides customer and behavior data to retailers — something retailers are always craving. From the location of each parked car, to parking violations, to how long each shopper spends in the store, this information can help retailers learn about customer behavior, measure effects of marketing campaigns and plan more effective traffic patterns.

Reduced footprint

Consumers are starting to use purchasing power to get their messages and opinions across to businesses and brands, and we’re seeing this prominently when it comes to reducing emissions and global warming. A report by Nielsen found that 66% of consumers are willing to pay more for sustainable goods, so it is likely that they will also pick a shopping center that has actively chosen to reduce its carbon footprint.

Smart parking technology directly relates to this effort: when shoppers spend less time searching for an open space, they’re releasing fewer emissions into the air and therefore cutting down on pollution. Cleverciti’s mission to creating a sustainable environment can be key to showing consumers that retailers care about more than just the bottomline.

Brick-and-mortar retailers are at a tipping point when it comes to winning back the hearts of consumers, but this effort is all about providing a better experience for the consumer than their digital counterparts. Cleverciti’s smart parking technology can create a more efficient, rewarding and sustainable experience for shoppers while also providing mission-critical information to retailers to continually improve the guest experience.

To learn more about how Cleverciti’s technology can help your business, connect with our teams here.

By Thomas Hohenacker, CEO and Founder of Cleverciti

The Internet of Things (IoT) is transforming how we live. From interactive entertainment and cloud-based services to self-driving cars and home automation, we’re all increasingly taking part in the connected world. And why wouldn’t we be? The IoT delivers many benefits (I know I’m not the only one who has asked Alexa to do the laundry, for example) for various aspects of life.

Cities are particularly well-positioned to experience significant benefits from the IoT. According to recent research from IoT Analytics on 1,600 real IoT use cases, the largest amount of projects were part of Smart City initiatives. The myriad use cases (from air quality monitoring to smart parking to real-time gunshot detection) can help citizens and visitors achieve better lives and help cities to stay reliably within their budget.

Even though the promise of the connected world is still in its infancy, there are already many proven IoT technologies today that are quickly gaining adoption across the world’s leading cities. The accessibility of these technologies makes it possible for any city to jump on the digital transformation bandwagon and deliver improved services for its citizens. New York City’s Smart City efforts, for example, include energy conservation through smart lighting and air quality monitoring. The city of Bad Hersfeld in Germany uses sensors to guide visitors quickly to available parking areas, significantly reducing CO2 emissions and pollution in the city.

IoT-powered Smart Cities: Now accessible to all

Thanks to extraordinary innovations from the global startup ecosystem, IoT devices have reduced substantially in cost while increasing in processing power. With this change, previously unthinkable potential is available at costs that are now accessible to nearly any city. I speak with cities every week who previously thought advanced IoT solutions were out of reach but are amazed to see the value they can generate for their citizens with a positive benefit to the overall financial position.

When considering a smart city solution, it is of course important to consider the financial impact. Many of the best solutions generate revenues or cut existing expenses, yielding a positive ROI very quickly. In addition, instead of large, up-front capital expenditures, some of the best solutions are available with a regular monthly fee structure, enabling cities to experience that positive ROI immediately rather than having to wait years for large up-front costs to pay off.

Some solutions can even be revenue generating. For example, curbside management solutions provide ridesharing and delivery drivers with a safe and efficient means to stop curbside, and also open the possibility for a city to charge a small transaction fee for each curb access event. Smart parking systems both increase utilization of paid parking spaces by more efficiently guiding users to available spaces and encourage more citizens to pay for the parking they use, thereby increasing parking revenues. Smart traffic management systems can automatically adjust traffic light timings to improve traffic flow and consequently improve timeliness of on-street public transit, leading to increased ridership and higher revenues.

The primary goal of these systems is always to improve city life for residents and visitors. The additional benefit of revenues or cost savings coupled with low recurring fee structures from IoT smart city vendors (versus large up-front capex) allows for cities to realize an immediate ROI and ease budgeting for future investments.

Data Privacy: Benefits of edge computing

As our world becomes more connected, data privacy issues make headline news nearly every week. Citizens place an enormous amount of trust in city officials to ensure that their data is protected, and that their security will not be compromised by living in the city. While technology has created some of these problems, technology will also help to solve them.

Today, sensors have become extraordinarily advanced. Power that was previously only available to super-computers can now be fit inside a low-energy consumption sensor. The term “edge computing” refers to sensors that don’t just sense data, they make sense of the data. With an edge computing model, sensors run its own advanced machine learning model in real-time, only sending data when certain user parameters are met. This approach ensures that no identifiable data is sent over the network.

Artificial Intelligence: Making sense of the deluge of data

The primary reason cities want to collect data is to improve situational awareness. However, they need to identify the right data to experience the most profound benefit. Smart city solutions generate millions of data points per day in any one city, and if implemented improperly can simply lead to confusion and data overload. That is why, now more than ever, artificial intelligence (AI) is part of the conversation regarding data collection. AI can be used to automatically pinpoint the data that is most important to a city and transform that data into useful, accessible information that enables quick and informed decision-making.

The best smart city solutions include dashboards and mobile apps that hide the complexity of millions of data points and instead present highly actionable information to the users. For example, video analytics can be used to identify and then manage traffic chokepoints. If a traffic jam is detected, users are notified and can take the proper action, such as opening up new lanes for travel or changing the current timing of traffic lights. These innovations are a valuable tool in data management and capture where vast amounts of raw data are uncategorized.

The digital ecosystem: Easing communication

Before the digital revolution, technologies were siloed and didn’t share a common language, and therefore didn’t “speak” to one another. Cities had to manually extract data from one system and then try to see how that information related to other events. This was a timely and complex process, to say the least. Today, we live in a much different world.

Open application programming interfaces allow for one system to communicate with another system, sharing data in a structured format. Through open APIs, different systems from different vendors are able to speak to one another, thereby eliminating manual work to gain insights that require looking at multiple types of sensor data together. Connecting information from multiple systems in one place provides myriad benefits to cities, allowing for the delivery of streamlined event-based information that enhances decision-making and accelerates response times.

IoT: The future of Smart Cities

There is no doubt that the IoT is impacting modern-day cities in a significant way. A combination of AI, advanced computing and contextually rich, real-time data streams delivered by IoT sensors and networks is makes smart city development affordable, accessible, and compelling moving forward. The IoT is the cornerstone of the digital transformation because it allows cities to optimize existing operations and excel at creating and pursuing exciting new business models. How will you grab hold of this opportunity?

This blog is part of a series that will dive into key members of the Cleverciti team and how they leverage their personal experiences to best lead the company.

Thomas Hohenacker is the Founder and CEO of Cleverciti Systems. Founded in 2012, Cleverciti develops a comprehensive suite of intelligent solutions designed to ease the parking experience and enhance driver communication.

A shopping trip to one’s favorite retailer should be full of excitement and fulfillment; whether gathering the week’s groceries, picking out new outfits or searching for upgraded appliances, a successful outing is typically an enjoyable time.

But because shopping can also be stressful, customers are always hoping to arrive at a location that provides a hassle-free experience. This can be impacted by a number of factors, with one occurring before even entering the facility: parking. It probably wouldn’t take long for someone to think of a store in their city that gives them a major headache when it comes to navigating its parking situation and finding an open spot in a timely manner.

Because there are often large amounts of people trying to enter and exit the establishment at the same time, it’s understandable that parking might be complicated — but it doesn’t have to be. Retailers can ensure a seamless parking experience for customers by leveraging intelligent solutions that simplify the parking management process and increase satisfaction.

Deploying these systems can enable parking managers to enhance operations through 4 key areas:

• Parking displays, such as Cleverciti’s CIRC360™, an omnidirectional floating LED sign, can be mounted on light posts to show live parking information and messaging. Customers can feel comfortable when they spot this kind of sign, knowing that the retailer cares about their parking experience and their ability to immediately access the facility.

• Innovative technologies that leverage the power of interconnectivity, edge computing, artificial intelligence and the Internet of Things (IoT) can deliver real-time identification of free and occupied spaces within outdoor parking areas.

• Drivers are dynamically guided to the free parking spaces through an LED sign’s intuitive communication platform, easing the search while reducing environmental impact.

• Signage, such as CIRC360™, provides the opportunity for shopping centers to display marketing messages and paid media sponsorships that drive branding and visibility, as well as emergency notifications and public safety alerts to keep drivers informed.

Parking operators can also take advantage of smart parking solutions to increase revenue by gathering intelligent data on parking habits and trends, allowing the facility to use its parking space more efficiently and adjust pricing according to occupancy dynamics.

When customers contemplate a trip to the store, they’re likely to consider both the time they’ll be able to shop and how long it will take them to find a parking spot — and the latter should not end up taking over the equation. Parking operators at retailers must reduce the complexity of this process to improve the parking experience for everyone involved.

By providing a powerful combination of precise parking data and instant local guidance in a single solution, Cleverciti helps shopping centers ease their parking challenges and improve customer service. Learn more here about how shopping centers in Slovenia, Chicago and Germany benefit from Cleverciti’s technology, and find out how parking at your establishment can be transformed.

It may sound like it, but deep tech is not the stuff of movies and science-fiction novels. Not anymore.

Since long we have been talking about high-end technologies or scientific techniques that would help revolutionise the world when used together or in conjunction with each other. These technologies are far more complex and bring radical changes to how we develop new things.

Experts and analysts have been trying to decipher when and where these technologies will make their impact and how long lasting their after-effects could be. As we approach the next decade, AI, IoT, Machine learning, Biotechnology, quantum computing and advanced robotics are shaping up to their full potential. They may take a long time and a lot of money to develop fully, but they can solve some very tough problems.

Swati Chaturvedi who coined the term ‘deep tech’ is the founder of a platform dedicated to angel investing called Propel(x). “We define deep technology as companies founded on a scientific discovery or meaningful engineering innovation. Most technology companies these days are built on business model innovation or offline to online business model transition using existing technology.” Deep tech is built from scratch, on something that does not really exist right now.

Here’s a look at few of the many companies developing applications using deep technology startups that can drastically change the way things function today.

• Biogenera works in the biotechnology driven pharmaceutical sector and is developing new DNA-based medicines for the treatment of specific illnesses such as tumours. It has developed the MyGenera platform to identify pathological and mutated genes and prevent diseases before the happen.

• Braincontrol has developed a technology that allows people to turn thought to action by using effective control systems. This technology helps people with physical disabilities to interact and connect with the world outside. Horus Technology works in the same field and has utilised deep tech to create a device that helps the blind ‘see’ the world around them with the help of robotics and AI.

• Empatica has developed a bracelet to help people with epilepsy by monitoring seizures. The bracelet detects the neural activity and body temperature of the wearer and processes this information to enable the user to steer clear of dangerous seizures.

Ecological applications

• Graphene-XT has developed a graphene suspension that produces high-grade graphene at lower costs with reduced environmental impact helping strengthen several industrial and construction based sectors.

• Greenrail has come up with a sustainable railway crossbar that is greener and smarter than its competitors. The cross has a lifespan exceeding 50 years, which is 20 more than its competitors and also incurs lesser vibration noise. It uses recycled materials and also generates energy from moving trains.

• Bio-on developed the world’s first biodegradable plastic and in 2017 presented a solution for bio-oil pollution restoration to eliminate hydrocarbons pollution.

• D-Orbit aims to deal with space junk by decommissioning and guiding the re-entry of satellites that have finished serving their time in space. It has developed a smart motor that is attached to satellite at the time of launch and removes it from the orbit in case of a major failure or end-of-life.

• Ribes Tech has an ultra-thin and flexible photovoltaic panel that turns sunlight into energy with ease and greater efficiency. A thin and flexible solar panel means it can be pasted on anything from roads and cars, to building walls and what not.

• Cleverciti uses AI to help drivers find free parking in cities, reducing air pollution in the process.

Daily-life Applications

• Trinckle 3D opens up the world of 3D printing to commoners by reducing barriers with the help of a cloud-based platform. This device will help making automation easier by speeding up the process of component manufacture and will also help cale up businesses by making it easier to duplicate parts and produce them on a large scale.

• Lexplore uses artificial intelligence to identify dyslexia in children. This Swedish company previously called Optolexia has combined automatic eye tracking camera techniques, Azure cloud-based services, reporting tools and data analysis and algorithm checkers to help in the early diagnosis of dyslexia. The statistical predictive model that they use to analyse large amounts of data provided by the camera has been powered by AI and helps tests all readers for signs of dyslexia.

• ApiOmat gifts companies the chance to mix their IT systems with mobile devices to efficiently create apps. Volkswagen launched their Digital Leadership app thanks to this company that aims to help connect businesses by going live with applications and IT related services faster and more efficiently than ever before. Their low cost and low code requiring tools helps designers create prototypes with ease which they can then beta-test and finalise significantly reducing development time.

• Roivant uses AI to help reduce the time and costs related to the drug development and manufacturing process. Founded in 2014 by Vivek Ramaswamy, the company raised $200 million dollars at a funding drive last year to expand their venture and spread to more parts of the US. The company is presently focusing its efforts on an Alzheimer’s drug that could help solve a lot of problems for several thousands of people around the world.

The Indian Picture

• Imaginate, Founder and CEO, Hemanth Satyanarayana, has the following to say about the impact of Deep tech, “Today, people generally refer to AI or machine learning as deep tech. Expanding the definition a little more, we have started integrating computer vision, image processing, AR/VR with the term. Deep tech is fundamentally a connection of different types of technologies to come up with a solution that has significant improvement over other products available in the market”.

• Ethx is one of the first Ethereum exchanges in India and was founded by Tarusha Mittal who believes that the platform provides a user-friendly, fast and secure solution to all cryptocurrency transaction related queries. It functions as a complete blockchain suite and provides users with the chance to contribute to a central network for tokens. Mittal predicts that Ethx will have over 5 million users by the end of 2019. Though a supreme court verdict on use of cryptocurrencies in India is still awaited.

• Pratilipi is the country’s largest online platform and bridges the gap between writers in English, Hindi, Malayalam, Bengali, Tamil, Marathi, Telugu, Gujarati, and Kannada. It is a self-publishing platform for writers and works as a buying platform for the readers. It boasts of over 53,000 writers and 3.3 million plus readers. Shally Modi, the co-founder of Pratilipi, had the following to say about the company, “Pratilipi is a reading and writing platform for the next billion internet users who hail from the small towns and villages of India. It’s a storytelling platform for Indian languages.”

• Ossus Biorenewables is a Bengaluru-based startup that is developing clean, carbon-free, energy and recovery solutions. They use bH2 Plus to generate biohydrogen from industrial effluents and polluted water bodies. Founded by Suruchi Rao and Shanta Rao in 2017, the company is now partnering with oil and gas companies like ONGC and hopes to set up base in the US by 2020.

• Language learning startup, Multibhashi teaches English and other regional Indian languages to millions of users around the world. According to Anuradha Agarwal, the founder, “We are committed to teaching job-related English communication skills to the next billion users coming online. We fully realise that a task of this scale can only be accomplished through technology”. The app lets users connect with a tutor and get personalised services for the entire learning process.

You might also be interested in: AI in healthcare: Automated nurses, face recognition for disease detection and more

In its nascent phase, deep tech was a little difficult to understand due to its complexity. Startups deploying it could have a hard time finding an investor with the right amount of technical knowledge. But these startups have been successful at piquing interest and raising significant amounts of capital for investments. In fact, the year 2017 witnessed over $3.5bn being invested in this field with over 600 successful deals.

A study by Wavestone stated that Europe has been seeing considerable growth in investment with respect to deep-tech technologies, the projected growth exceeding three times the average growth since 2015. France is the global leader in terms of venture capitalist investments, and the UK leads in access to finance, followed by France.

Venture capital funds have contributed the most in Europe, like Kima Ventures, High-Tech Grunderfunds, Bpifrance, LocalGlobe, Horizon Ventures and Passion Capital. America too stayed well-represented thanks to Intel, Apple, Qualcomm, Microsoft Google, Cisco and Amazon. The most active European contributors were Siemens, Bosch, BNP Paribas and Swisscom.

EIT Digital is a European organisation consisting of a team of professionals who are passionate about digital innovation and entrepreneurship. It supports over 156 major European companies, start-ups and research institutes and has offices all over the world, including but not restricted to Berlin, Eindhoven, Helsinki, London, and Madrid. The EIT Digital Challenge, organised by them is a unique competition aimed at European deep tech companies.