MyCarLot is a Digital Cities innovation activity that helps planning parking strategies for local governments and better parking services for citizens, leveraging upon connected sensors, cloud infrastructure and artificial predictive algorithms.
Taking the kids to school, or to sport, or going to the grocery store, or the doctor, or simply getting to work, and thousands of daily common mobility practices, they can all be a real hassle because of the overbooked parking space that we experience today in our cities. Sounds familiar? Of course it does: parking lots are expensive and not well used everywhere in Europe. That’s why we present you MyCarLot, our latest mobility innovation project, which leverages parking management, occupation sensors and park availability forecasts to allow optimise both off-street and on-street parking areas occupation and related revenues, while enhancing quality of life in cities.
MyCarlot provides citizens (users) with a seamless and tailored user experience covering all the steps from finding available parking lots – also in advance and based on personal preferences and needs, by relying on predictive algorithms, virtually booking it, easily paying the correct price (e.g. automated self-payment).
Currently working and testing in the city of Rennes, France, MyCarLot brings to the market powerful advantages that we cannot find in any possible competitor so far, such as:
- Its advanced multi-technology sensors and communications
- Its deep application enabled by predictive algorithms and vehicle-to-infrastructure communication
- It can be addressed also for use cases for special needs like disabled parkings or electric vehicles
Stéphane Péan, Digital Cities Action Line Leader asserted: “Smart parking is the flagship solution to link connected cars to digital cities. With MyCarLot, smart parking enters the Internet of Things era (LoRa network), bringing also the service directly into the car. Furthermore, predictive analytics are its key differentiator on the market.”
Maurizio Griva, Innovation Activity Leader said: “To drivers, parking often leads to frustration. For businesses, parking availability is critical to success. If parking is difficult, all kind of interactions become less attractive for customers and employees, driven to go elsewhere, and resulting in businesses underperforming, shutting down, or relocating. Smart parking helps drivers finding (and booking, reaching, paying - where applicable) the best parking possibilities available.
Exploiting real time and forecasted parking data, myCarLot also helps cities to carefully and effectively balance competing needs (parking for people with disabilities, electric vehicles, car sharing, loading/unloading, delivery, residents,etc.), to support a vibrant city and create livable neighborhoods.”
The partners involved in this Innovation Activity are: DFKI (German Research Centre for Artificial Intelligence), the University of Rennes 1, CRF (Centro Ricerche Fiat), and Santer Reply as Business Champion.
EIT Digital's Innovation Activities deliver new products or services, create startups and spinoffs to commercialise outputs from projects, and encourage the transfer of technologies for market entry.
MyCarLot is one of the 9 Innovation Activities of the Digital Cities Action Line for 2018. This Action Line leverages the digital transformation of the cities through centralised, participative and collaborative interactions between city actors: government, city service providers, industry, and citizens. This transformation enables the deployment of disruptive information, mobility and safety services in the cities.
Contact MyCarLot through the following e-mail account: m.griva@reply.it.
