New Technology Prooduct: Car Parking Spotter

Name of Technology: Parking Spotter

1. Summary/Discussion

During Consumer Electric Show (CES) which was held on the first week of January 2015, Ford has shown its new technological development progress in line with their project named “Ford Smart Mobility”. It includes new technologies such as remote repositioning or remote driving and parking spotter through gathering large amount of data about individual’s driving patterns and traffic situations using distance sensor and camera equipped in automobiles. The gathered data will be processed into information like in formulation of maps. The CTO of the Ford has mentioned that the new technologies will allow the drivers to handle their automobiles easier.

Parking Spotter is a service developed by Ford that uses a distance sensor which is originally equipped within the Ford automobile to detect whether there is any vacant parking lot and share those data through cloud database that other drivers can access. This allows lots of drivers to easily find available parking lot in restaurants and shopping malls that they visit frequently. It must be a very useful technology especially in the places like in urban cities where parking system is terribly difficult. Nevertheless, it also offers information about real time traffic conditions and issue an alert if the user is trying to park in the spot that is illegal or other driver has made reservation on it.

Additionally, the CTO of Ford said that his team is on the development stage of automated vehicle that will require development in technologies like more improved sensors and higher definition of maps.

1. Reaction

As Gartner (October 4, 2014) has mentioned that Cloud Computing is one of the top strategic technology trend in 2015, more companies tend to focus and develop technologies which utilize cloud database. Most of automobile drivers may have difficulties in parking especially when they look for an open parking lot in urban areas. Roaming around the parking area cause more carbon emission and waste of fuels. Applying this technology can prevent air pollution and reduce cost for fuels.

Parking Spotter technology can be effectively applied in the Philippines since the country has some cities that the population is concentrated such as Makati, Ortigas and Manila. Over populated cities also has lots of automobiles that will cause the difficulty in looking for parking area. One aspect of this technology, which is access of traffic information will also help drivers in urban cities in Philippines to drive smart and wisely. But the problem comes from the fact that the distance sensors and cameras utilized in this technology are exclusively for Ford automobiles. If other automobile companies also will develop technologies in mobility, we may expect to see the not only commercialized but also generalized automated vehicles in near future.