The Smart Partnership

A group of researchers from Advanced Telecommunication Technology Research Group (ATT), Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia Edward Chan Kam Fai, Gan Yi Reng, Leow Tan Chun Kit and Dr. Kamaludin Mohamad Yusof aims to solve one of the most problematic issues in cities i.e. illegal parking! The researchers also wanted a better way to manage the sensors and develop applications, and thus, they chose FAVORIOT as the IoT platform.

The Issues of Illegal Double Parking

Illegal double parking is one of the primary cause of horrible traffic congestion in many city centers. A visit is conducted from StarMetro to hotspots like Taipan Business Centre, USJ 10, Subang Jaya shows that road user blatantly ignored the No Parking and Towing Zone signboards that aimed to prevent double parking. Although Subang Jaya Municipal Council (MPSJ) has issued a total of 25,270 compound notices at 2012, the problem still hasn’t come to cease. In a report, from World Bank 12th Malaysia Economic Monitor, Malaysian typically motorist in Kuala Lumpur spends more than 250 million hours per year in traffic congestion. Traffic congestion in Kuala Lumpur also cost over RM3,100 per motorist or over 1.1% of national GDP annually for the country. Of course, Malaysia is not sitting idly with respect to this situation.

For example, as Cyberjaya braces for the influx of population by 2018, we need to start resolving current city administration issues for better management of traffic flow. At the same time, the lack of parking space in open and public parking areas within Cyberjaya has resulted in teething congestion problems during peak hours. Lack of enforcement manpower by the local council and growing double parking problems is a common sight within Cyberjaya.  The City Innovation Council is actively discussing and reviewing ways to optimizing innovative technology to resolve teething city problems and increase the quality of life in Cyberjaya.

There are many initiatives by public and even private sectors to cope this problem. Building a robust public transport, encouraging cycling culture and introducing smart traffic light system, these are the efforts to alleviate the situation. Activation of smart social solutions by resolving city administration problems such as double parking using public empowerment, connected things, and communications technology. With more installation of sensors and smarter city applications in place, more opportunities for

We would like to see how technology can be designed to resolve a double parking problem by empowering the public, building management, and local council to cooperate by means of Internet of Things (IoT) or mobile smart devices. With more installation of sensors and smarter city applications in place, more opportunities for the smart city urban public services will be made available.

The Solution – ParkKing

This project experiments innovative smart city solutions to improve urban public services. The project aims for the public, building management, and local council to cooperate, by setting up an integrated information platform with multi-source data that works with devices/things that resolve a particular city problem as a service.

The project is called Smart Parking with Automated Double Park Detection System (ParkKing) system with the objective to solve the problem of double parking (Figure 1). Apart from this, ParkKing also helps the drivers to locate the nearest available empty parking lot surround them. This will indirectly avoid the problem of double parking where drivers can find the empty parking nearby and park their vehicles properly.

In existing solution, the car detector is located at the center of the parking lot. However, ParkKing has its car detector sensor located 30cm inside from the boundary of the parking lot as shown in Figure 2. This is so that it can detect whether there is an available parking in the lot or there is a car double-parked outside. Next, there is a transceiver gateway installed at the lamp post which can connect up to 20 car detectors of parking lots. When it detect a presence of a car either it is in the parking lot or double-parked car, it will send the data to the control server of the system. For the drivers, there will be a smartphone application which will locate the nearest empty parking lot. When the ParkKing system detects a double-parked car, it will send to the FAVORIOT platform and notify the authority to tow the vehicle away.

We believe that the integration of ParkKing system with the existing smart traffic light system and intelligent parking system will bring us a smart management transport system for a smart city.

With the presence of our ParkKing system, we can have an automated double parking detector to ease the management or the local authority of Cyberjaya. Next, we also show the road users in Cyberjaya to the nearest available parking lot available. Thus, they will not simply double-park their car. Besides, after notifying the authority, they can tow the double parked car to warn the drivers and other road users not to double park next time. This is very significant because when there are cars double-parked, it causes traffic congestion. When traffic jam, actually government is spending more money to subsidize the petrol since traffic jam causes a higher petrol consumption.

Future Plans

Apart from what have been mentioned above, we do consider the future development of this project. In future, we can install a camera at the lamp post so that to identify the double-park car’s number plate and match with the data in Jabatan Pengangkutan Jalan Malaysia (JPJ) database using OpenCV for object recognition system. Then, it will send a penalty to the car owner. Besides, we also think of to obtain the car parking data like the period of parking. Typically, customers would want to park at the nearest space to shop. So, to help to reduce the problem of insufficient parking space, we plan to have a car park for those who wish to park extended period and limit the time of parking on the street. This can be done by obtaining the time of parking using our ParkKing system. With this, users will have a better customer experience where they get to find parking easily and bring business opportunity to the shops nearby. In our future plan, we also want to integrate our ParkKing system with an automated parking fee payment system to replace the current parking coupon system. This ParkKing system will also be a liability for the management, but we can generate income by co-operating with the shop or company nearby not only to cover the maintenance fees but become a passive income as well! For future development, this ParkKing system can contribute to traffic flow prediction by using the big data concept. By having traffic flow forecasting, we can definitely have a well thought-out town planning.

FAVORIOT offered a very affordable pricing plan as shown below:

The Beginner Plan is very suitable for University students who have been assigned or chose IoT project as their Final Year Project. A single device such as Raspberry Pi or Arduino that collects from several connected sensors can stream to the IoT platform. A simple dashboard is provided to visualize the measurements. This plan is also suitable for an individual developer or hobbyist that would like to familiarize with IoT platform, conduct self-learning or participate in IoT Hackathons. At RM 8.33 (or less than USD 2.00) per month, you can become the next Generation-IoT and on your way to be one of the rare talents in the job market today!

The Startup Plan is perfect for Freelancers or SMEs or Startups to provide IoT solution for a medium size project up to 150 devices. In fact, they can also create multiple projects or applications but limited to the total number of 150 devices.

The Business Plan is great for developing big commercial IoT project. It can support up to 300 devices for many smart applications.

However, if a company requires connecting thousands of devices, they may contact/email their customized requirements to sales@favoriot.com

CLICK HERE to Subscribe/Request for Quotation.

Check out the COMPLETE Tutorial How to connect an Arduino to FAVORIOT Platform. You can also download a STEP-by-STEP Tutorial –  TUTORIAL – Cytron Uno with FAVORIOT Platform (60 downloads)

About the Author

Dr. Mazlan Abbas the Co-Founder of FAVORIOT Sdn Bhd. He is an IOT Evangelist and a Thought Leader. He received an award as 50 Most Impactful Smart Cities Leaders by World CSR 2017. He is ranked No. 20th Thought Leader in IOT by 2014 Onalytics Report – “The Internet of Things – Top 100 Thought Leaders”, ranked Top 10 in IoT Top 100 Influencers by Postscapes 2016/2017, ranked Top 100 in Smart Cities Top Experts by Agilience Authority Index May 2016. You can reach him on LinkedIn or Twitter. Check all his presentation slides HERE.

We wanted our cities to be livable and prosperous that are built upon well-functioning urban infrastructure services like health, energy, buildings and transportation. Without proper planning, cities will see their social and economic growth stifled in congestion, air pollution, health issues and blackouts. We also believed cities can be smarter if cities can quickly respond to the needs of the people.

The Smart City’s End Game

The final aim of Smart City is to:

• Make a better use of the public resources
• Increase the quality of the services offered to the citizens
• Reduce the operational costs of the public administrations.
• Support better living, create more opportunities, support stronger and more cohesive communities
• Improve the quality of life overall for all residents

By 2050 more than 6 billion people are expected to live in cities. Cities are hubs for cultural and economic activities. They are the engines of economic growth. But the development was not always “smart,” sacrificing health conditions, for instance, for greater productivity.

The Challenges

Cities are complex systems that are difficult to understand without the right information. We need to create cities that address people’s needs. That means learning city challenges by studying the people who use them. With Internet of Things (IoT), it will help us rethink how we monitor, measure and manage cities so we can make them healthier places for their inhabitants. Cities are complicated and have their own set of challenges, such as:

• Multiple authorities and commercial parties manage them.
• They constantly evolve, reacting to the needs of their inhabitants.

To make it happen, it requires a process of negotiation, integration, iteration. And there will be lots of different parties involved: political leaders, civil servants, service providers, technology companies, health services, police forces, property owners and most important of all, the citizens themselves.

Hey, City! Are You Alive?

Ultimately, there is the need to correctly understand our cities and the interactions that make them “alive,” so that we can make more informed decisions about the cities future. But first, answer this question – “Have you measured the Pulse of Your City? How healthy is your city?”

Presentation Slides “Listen to the Pulse of the City Using IoT” – DOWNLOAD