Siemens launches radar-based parking pilot

The company has installed for test and demonstration purposes radar sensors on street lamps that provide information on parking space occupancy.  The network of sensors scans from above an area of up to 30 meters, the equivalent of five to eight parking spaces.

"Thanks to our system, the nerve-wracking search for a place to park can be made considerably easier as the information on available parking spaces can be transmitted to the car drivers before they set off", says Jochen Eickholt, Head of the Siemens Mobility Division.

The test results will be available in 2016 and should prove that by reducing parking search traffic the system is suitable for cutting CO2 emissions.

As part of the City2.e 2.0 research project, Siemens is demonstrating a faster way to find curbside parking in the Bundesallee in Berlin in cooperation with the Senate Department for Urban Development and the Environment in Berlin (SenStadtUm), the VMZ Berlin Betreibergesellschaft mbH, the Institute for Climate Protection, Energy and Mobility (IKEM), and the Robotics Innovation Center of the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI).

Street lamps on a 200-meter-long section of road between Walther-Schreiber-Platz and Friedrich-Wilhelm-Platz in Berlin Friedenau have been fitted with radar sensors that continuously monitor urban parking areas and report free parking spaces and the number of occupied e-parking spots to parking space management software.