From August 21st to 23rd, China Smart City International Expo (Smart City Expo for short) was held in Shenzhen Convention and Exhibition Center. The exhibition is jointly sponsored by the National Development and Reform Commission and the Small Town Reform Center, the Shenzhen Municipal People's Government, China Ping An Insurance (Group) Co., Ltd., the Smart City Development Alliance and the China Chamber of International Commerce.

As a static traffic, smart parking is an important part of smart cities. At this exhibition, Yan Jun, Chairman of AIpark (Love Parking), accepted an exclusive interview with Yiou.

AIpark is an enterprise group with "AI smart parking technology + big data operation platform" as its core. It is also the first high-tech enterprise in the world to commercially implement high-level image recognition technology into urban smart parking. In June this year, AIpark (爱parking) received hundreds of millions of RMB in Series B investment led by Weilai Capital, followed by China-US Green Fund and Sanli Group.

AIpark has launched a series of products such as AIpark City smart parking management system, AIpark One smart parking management system, AIpark Sky Eye, AIpark-A, and AIpark APP. It is reported that at present, AIpark City has been officially commercialized in Beijing, Shijiazhuang, Handan and other cities, effectively solving the problems of "difficult and chaotic parking" in cities, and greatly improving the utilization rate of parking resources. AIpark One unmanned parking management technology has signed 2000+ parking lots in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Tianjin, Shijiazhuang, Handan, Xi'an, Jinan and other cities. By realizing the "unmanned" parking lot, it has greatly improved the management of the parking lot efficiency and reduce management costs.

Yan Jun made a brief sharing from the perspectives of technology development prospects, company operations and strategies.

In terms of on-street parking technology, medium and high-level video is the general trend

On-street parking means that vacant and unused berths on urban roads are open to citizens, and fees are charged by region, time period, and duration, and the charging standard is formulated by the local government. If rationally utilized and relatively fairly distributed, it can improve the travel efficiency of car owners and the government's traffic management efficiency, and it will also help remind relevant parking companies to do a good job in their own management and improve market competitiveness.

There are many solutions for on-street parking to achieve the purposes of finding a parking space, identifying vehicles entering and exiting, timing, and charging. Yan Jun, chairman of AIpark, said that intelligent on-street parking has gone through five stages: meters, license plate scanning PDA equipment, geomagnetism, video piles, and mid-to-high-level video surveillance.

The development of smart parking technology is not rapid and fractured, but a transitional state. Today, geomagnetic, video piles, and high-level video are three common on-street parking solutions that coexist in the market. When it comes to the development trend of industry technology, Yan Jun confidently believes that mid-to-high-end video must be the development trend and will completely replace geomagnetism and other solutions in the future.

Medium and high-level video, that is, to set up image monitoring intelligent hardware equipment at high places, and accurately identify vehicle status, parking space status and license plate information within the range of the "electronic fence" patrolled by the camera. The front-end equipment transmits information back to the back-end operation platform, and the platform can realize user timing, billing, vehicle data storage, data analysis, and user management. Relevant technicians of AIpark (love parking) revealed that a single pole of AIpark Sky Eye can cover 8 to 12 berths, and the recognition accuracy rate reaches above 99%.

Behind the mid-to-high-end video surveillance, there is also an AI algorithm system called "AII Blue Brain" (Artificial Intelligence Identification Blue Brain). This set of algorithms consists of six core algorithms: trajectory tracking, target detection, machine automatic inspection, multi-level image processing, license plate high-confidence judgment, and parking event high-confidence judgment. The "gate" can identify and filter abnormal parking data, ensure accurate and effective parking records, and intelligently correct image recognition results.

AIpark sky eye

For a better user experience, when a car owner thinks that the system has a misrecognition situation, he can make a telephone complaint through the complaint channel in the APP and the vehicle management center set up by the local government. AIpark (Love Parking) keeps the parking records of each vehicle for one year, forming a complete chain of video evidence, which is conducive to clarifying the division of responsibilities afterwards.

The purchase cost of medium and high-level video technology is higher than that of geomagnetism and video piles. How to grasp the user's psychology of paying? Yan Jun added: "For a project, what you look at is the cost of management and operation, not just the price of the first purchase. Take the urban parking management service platform we cooperated with the Shijiazhuang Municipal Government as an example, from the first phase of the project to the third phase Engineering, the number of replaced manpower is reduced from 2,200 to 300, and in the long run, the overall cost is reduced.”

It is understood that the government comprehensively considers three factors when purchasing parking enterprise services: technology, business and service. AIpark (Love Parking) believes that the priority of the three is decreasing layer by layer. Yan Jun said: "When the government makes decisions, it never wants to be a test field for immature technologies, but chooses mature and well-used technologies that can be applied on a large scale." Currently, AIpark (love parking) city-level The parking solution was officially commercialized in Beijing, Shijiazhuang and Handan.

"First high and then low" and a new phenomenon

AIpark expands the market in line with the principle of "first high and then low", that is, it first cuts into first-tier cities, and then sinks into second- and third-tier cities. Customers in first-tier cities have broader horizons, stronger brand and service concepts, stronger purchasing power, and easier market development.

However, some new phenomena also attracted Yan Jun's attention. "Some time ago, the demand for smart parking in some counties in the Pearl River Delta and Yangtze River Delta also increased. When the local government took the initiative to find me, I was very surprised. Now they are actively initiating procurement. The market is blowing out, and our core is to serve the B-side well. And G-end users, create value for users, and then drive C-end awareness.”

Second- and third-tier cities are now in full swing to develop smart cities. Understanding their consumption habits and consumption characteristics may be able to fight a bloody way in the red sea of "a city has more than a dozen parking apps" in first-tier cities.

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