Highlights

Smart Parking Meter System with Compatible Mobile Application

•  The PKLOT app is an international parking service that helps drivers in countries such as Singapore, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau
•  Domestic application of the Smart Parking Meter System greatly helped drivers and the local governments alike in increasing productivity and decreasing risks of fines and underpayment

After receiving wide-spread recognition in the transportation field, the company started to further expand into the area. Acer ITS began developing parking solutions five years ago, as a means to solve the parking difficulties faced by modern metropolis today.

The brainchild of the project is the Smart Parking Meter System, a state-of-the-art parking management solution which took the company between three to four years of research and development to create. The machine makes searching for roadside parking and the subsequent payment a piece of cake, and is also the world’s first roadside parking management system that integrated automatic occupancy detection, license plate recognition, cloud platform compatibility and multi-payment technology all into one. The system enhances the management efficiency and turnover rate of existing roadside parking spaces. Moreover, the system provides full function backend support, all managed by an Intel processor to power two separate detection cameras, and also guarantee smooth software usage. Finally, the system was engineered by Acer’s very own industrial design team, giving it a futuristic look that is fitting for a futuristic smart city.

The president of Acer ITS, Mr. Kenny Yu, said that the machine enables drivers to obtain real-time information on the availability of street side parking spaces. The time saved by using the system help reduce traffic congestion as well as pollution emissions from running cars in search of parking. Yu also said that the machine is beneficial to parking enforcers at developing countries. More than often, parking enforcers in countries such as Malaysia and Taiwan conduct their responsibilities on scooters. Often, the enforcers work under varied temperatures, and are constantly subjected to traffic accidents. With the implementation of the system, Yu said, parking enforcers would not have to work in harsh conditions that would potentially threaten their lives.

According to Yu, the system is compatible with multiple payment methods. In application to Taiwan, the parking meter currently accepts contactless smartcard payments and online mobile payments, as well as payment from the machine’s compatible mobile app. The system is currently installed at selected parking hotspots around Taiwan, especially in the city of Tainan. Yu said that from cross referencing the data collected, the Tainan City Government observed 2.2 times return in finances, because the aforementioned payments encourage consumers to pay on the spot, without having to locate another payment center at a later time. The traditional way tends to delay the government’s parking income due to deferred processing.

The president also said that collected data displayed a decrease in the government’s budget for ticketing, as the system would steer all financial transactions towards a paperless route, which Yu has said was Acer ITS’s way of giving back to the environment one step at a time.

A recent survey was conducted around the neighborhoods that received the system, and revealed that the system was positively received by 99% of those who took the survey, citing easy payment and the system’s multiple payment compatibility as reasons to like the system due to convenience.

The system has also brought many accolades to Acer ITS. In 2018 alone, the system won the ‘Global ICT Excellence Award – Private Sector Excellence’ at the World Congress on Information Technology, the ‘ITS Application Award’ from the Intelligent Transportation Society of Taiwan, the bronze awards for ‘Best Technology Innovation’ and ‘Best Experience Innovation’ at the Future Commerce Award. Most recently, the system also won the ‘Computex d&i Award’ at Computex 2019, and Taiwan Excellence Award 2020.

Compatible Mobile Application ‘PKLOT’ a Standalone Convenience

As a part of the convenience supplied by the Smart Parking Meter System, Acer ITS also released a complimentary mobile application to report parking availability of the meter system to prospective users. The app, known as ‘PKLOT,’ is synced to all operating meter units to provide users with real time updates on the availability of the system. Moreover, users of the smart parking meter system may simply pay for their parking using the mobile application, as PKLOT supports in-app credit card payment by linking the license plate of a vehicle to its owner’s credit card.

The most convenient aspect of the app is that it is not designed simply to only compliment the parking meter hardware. The app could also function independently from the system to provide users with parking availability updates in all partnering parking complexes. PKLOT integrates on and off-street parking information and cashless parking payment, linking to should be off-street operators’ servers to collect real time parking availability data to feed into the app so that users may find nearby spots with ease. Once a driver selects a parking location, the built-in navigation of the app will guide the driver to the parking destination within minutes. Finally, PKLOT also lowers drivers’ chances of receiving fine from unpaid tickets, all the while creating a seamless user experience.

Since its release, the app has had 2.1 million downloads worldwide, as the app is also an international service. With an excellent team behind PKLOT to curate it, the app is currently available in Hong Kong, Macau and Singapore, providing the same convenient parking services to its users in different languages.

Acer ITS

http://www.acerits.com

 Smart Parking Meter System with Compatible Mobile Application

Selling points:

• Smart Parking Meter System — State-of-the-art software engineering and futuristic hardware design. Intel processor powered software that enables fast calculation and the capacity to power multiple cameras. Acer’s industrial design team also made the product visually futuristic and sleek
• PKLOT — Compatible with Acer ITS’s parking meter, but could also independently provide real time parking availability update services in various languages around the world