Google Labs launches Android app for finding open parking spots | Hacker News Reader

Google Labs launches Android app for finding open parking spots

openspot.googlelabs.com

44 pointsabraham26 comments

This is a big hole in existing maps / directions sites. In most big cities (where, as it turns out, many people reside) it's rather an academic exercise to be able to travel to the exact coordinates of your destination, what's important is finding the nearest reasonably priced parking spot. If you don't know the area (which is why you'd be using directions anyway) this can be a significant challenge given the commonplace difficulties of navigating downtown traffic (such as grid-lock, confusing layout, one way streets, etc.)

It's good to see someone at least tackling the problem.

I haven't used any of these apps, but being that I live in a high-density area (Hoboken) I know very well how useless this kind of an app would be. Parking in Hoboken (and NYC) consists of the following - circling. Even if you had a realtime stream of all of the metered spots and each meter had some means of determining if it was available or taken, the demand almost always outweighs the supply, so when you really needed this app to work is exactly when it would let you down.

Particular to these apps, do they have an expiration on these spots that are marked empty by the person leaving? After a few false positives I'd be inclined to throw the app away and rely on the circling technique and save the battery life on my phone.

> Do they have an expiration on these spots that are marked empty by the person leaving?

Not exactly. But if you look at the top of the example image they provided there is some indication of how long the empty spot is expected to last.

Is this actually a problem? I usually just park my bike at the nearest pole, of which there are always plenty.

I wish I could upvote you more... the price we all pay for free (car) parking is incredible and the "driving around until you find a spot"-part of it is actually neglible. Check out "The High Cost of Free Parking" if you're interested in the topic: http://www.amazon.com/High-Cost-Free-Parking/dp/1884829988

In dense parts of San Francisco where this would be most useful, by the time I'm getting into my car, usually someone is already waiting for the space.

This summer, San Francisco is launching a pilot program with wireless sensors that will also produce a data feed that can be used to find parking:

http://sfpark.org/how-it-works/data-feed/

Rutgers Winlab is has also been testing a sensor based approach to detecting open parking spots. They're using a sensor on the car to detect open spaces and measure their sizes to see if they're suitable as parking spots. The professor leading the project There is an article that talks about it here: http://www.technologyreview.com/communications/24497/page1/ and the lead author of a paper explaining it is here, in case anyone is interested in reading about it. The paper title is ParkNet. http://www.winlab.rutgers.edu/~suhas/

> "by the time I'm getting into my car, usually someone is already waiting for the space."

then this wouldn't be _that_ useful :-)

the user has to manually tap that the parking space is free, right? bummer.

As others point out, this is a typical case of an idea that looks good on paper but in practice is quite useless, since there's no reservation feature. The most annoying thing would be to go to a spot shown as empty and finding it already full. That would result in more gas consumption than today's ad hoc method of finding a space.

Plus I'm not sold that the points system will be enough for people to take time to mark free spots when they're just trying to get on with their day. Unless they start saying "you can't keep using this program unless you have a certain number of points," anyway.

Now if Google could collect real-time data via automated parking ticket systems, or even by getting access to security camera feeds and doing some image processing, then they'd be in business. I don't know how these systems are typically run, but it might be a smart move for Google to pursue partnerships with popular big-city parking locations for exclusive access to this data, to the extent that it can be collected from current systems.

I think you may be missing some aspects.

First, this is just a trial, they'll get a lot of information about how useful it is and tweak it accordingly.

Second, consider the data generated. A little bit of number crunching will generate a lot of highly useful information that can be used independently. Such as a map of all parking areas in the city along with other metadata such as how often there are spaces available, etc. Think about how this can be used. It can be used to provide better driving directions so that you are directed to nearby parking structures instead of the destination itself, when there isn't parking at the destination. It can also be used to figure out where it's best to park based on factors like general location, time of day, day of week, etc.

Darn i thought this was going to use real time satellite imagery and heat mapping software to determine open spots. Alas, it's people powered and I am very lazy and do not care about the next guy finding a spot. If Im pulling out of a spot whoever is behind me gets the spot and I just meander around them and go on my way. Im not going to pull out my IP device, open this app and then mark soon to be vacant spot as open. I would fair to say the majority acts/feels same way as I do.

Hopefully this will develop and they will use the tech I had hope this would be using. It's a start though.

This should have been a protocol, like Wave, so that Wuze and TomTom and whatnot can implement it in their GPS apps. Then it would start becoming marginally useful.

Are these sort of things only open to US users? many apps I find on the net I scan the QR code and it finds nothing. I'm in Australia, so I assumed Pandora, Last.FM etc were all region specific, but this? I wish it would at least tell me that I'm not eligible rather than just saying nothing was found.

I just downloaded it and surprise surprise there are no spots listed at all in San Francisco.

Ok, perhaps that's because the app is new, or maybe there are just no free spots.

However, in a busy and competitive city like SF I really wonder how useful this is going to be. From my own anecdotal evidence living in SF, if I drive by an empty spot downtown during the day, it's usually gone anyway by the time I've circled around the block to come past it again.

Don't even get me started about the California laws of not using a cell phone while driving...

Agreed, the current implementation is unlikely to work where it matters - in dense areas.

Now if they'd find a way to couple this to realtime satellite data...

If any company had realtime satellite data over even a handful of major metropolitan areas there would be a lot better uses for that data than finding open parking spaces.

Probably, I could also imagine various applications that would turn into instant cash cows - the parking spot problem being one of the most obvious.

I wonder what the barrier is here, as the data very likely exists. The usual terrorist fears? Privacy?

Or is satellite coverage still an "wait a day to get updated image"-affair?

The data likely doesn't exist. The Earth is big, there are only a few Earth imagery satellites, they have a narrow field of view for the highest resolution imagery, so they must pick and choose their targets. And, of course, satellite imagery is constrained by local cloud cover.

Hopefully I will be wrong about this, but I'm not expecting this to be very helpful. In dense areas of SF, where I live, open parking spaces last less than a minute - sometimes only a few seconds. If where you're parking isn't densely populated, then you don't need the app at all, because you can easily find a space.

Another similar app for the iPhone just came out called TakeMySpot. Seems that there's a building market for this space. It'd be nice to see something like this actually catch on.

The real problem is that people are driving in densely populated cities (esp. one person per car).

Does anyone else find how disgustingly in your face earning "karma points" is?

Game mechanics should be more subtle.

I'm more disappointed that they passed on the obvious pun.

What pun? The "karma" "mark a" anagram or what?

I believe sanj means "Carma".

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