Parking on the University of New Hampshire’s Durham campus is a limited resource; a limitation that results in frustration among the UNH community of faculty, staff, and students, and has introduced unnecessary operational overhead for the UNH Parking and Transportation department. Thankfully, technological advancements now exist for the widespread adoption of the next generation of smart parking solutions, and the UNH Connectivity Research Center is leading that charge at UNH with our most recent project deployed in our own backyard.
UNHInnovation (UNHI) currently has eight designated visitor parking spots (shared between UNHI, the UNH-IOL, and the CRC) near the entrance of our building. The spots are in close proximity to off-campus student housing and various local businesses, and non-designated vehicles are often parked in the spots, resulting in frustration when guests are unable to access their reserved parking. Due to the shared nature of the parking, it is difficult to track which vehicle is designated, and the parking lot is not easily viewed from inside. Significant time and resources are spent managing the parking situation.
In hopes of solving this problem, the CRC recently installed an in-ground smart parking sensor under each of the eight spots. The sensors are called PNI PlacePods and they communicate with a base station located inside the building. The sensors can detect whether a vehicle is occupying a parking spot and communicates the information over long-range wireless technology (LoRaWAN). The front desk staff is then notified through a web-based application when parking spot status changes. Testing of the installation is currently going well and our student employees have begun working on a custom desktop application to support specific parking management needs.
The next rollout of smart parking on campus will coincide with a Computer Science/IT Senior Capstone project and the CRC will be working in conjunction with UNH IT and UNH Parking and Transportation. The goal of the project will be to deploy in-ground parking sensors in the parking lot at another location on campus while Computer Science and IT students build an IT infrastructure to support and launch a web-based and mobile application to identify when spots are available in the lot. This project will lay the foundation for the potential to convert more spaces on campus into “smart” parking lots.
In addition to the current projects at UNH, the CRC is working with PNI Corporation (the company that manufactures the parking sensors) on an industry sponsored research project involving other functionality in their products. If proven successful, the functionality will be tested as a proof of concept in the “smart” lot at UNHI.
Chris Dube
Research Program Manager
Connectivity Research Center
