Fall$ 08 HotSpot - University of Michigandesci501/2012/APD-2012-10.pdf · A Guiding System for Open Parking Lots ... a Hospital or a Restaurant. Such parking locations can be called

I L L U M I N A T O R S

HotSpot A Guiding System for Open Parking Lots

2012  Fall  APD  Project  Report   16

08 Fall  

With ever growing population and increasing number of people migrating to urban areas, parking problem has become inevitable all across the world. People often encounter problems while parking their cars in busy parking lots and it gets worse when everyone tries to get the parking location which is nearest to some specific destination such as a Mall, a Hospital or a Restaurant. Such parking locations can be called ideal parking location for them. They spend a lot of time circling around the parking area just looking for an available parking spot near their destination. Our team recognizes this as a problem and proposes to design a product for open parking lots, named “Hotspot”, to assist people in finding an ideal location more easily and quickly. Hotspot is an intelligent arrangement of LED light poles and sensors laid out in open parking lot to convey useful information to users efficiently. The working principle is to provide users with all the available options at a glance so that they can choose the best location quickly instead of driving to one particular location which might not be available and trying for which will only result in wastage of time. Our research shows that such a product is highly desirable. Although many parking guidance systems already exist in market however hardly any of them is designed specifically for open parking lots. Majority of them are towards closed structures. We have conducted research of previous designs and existing patents and have taken steps to improve upon those designs to cater the need of open parking lots.

Ankit Srivastava, Benjamin Park, Siqi Wei, Yu-Ting Chiu

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Table of Contents 1. INTRODUCTION ....................................................................................................................................... 3

1.1 Design Problem ................................................................................................................................... 3 1.2 Personas and User Scenarios ............................................................................................................. 3 1.3 Motivation and Team’s Competency ................................................................................................... 3

2. PREVIOUS DESIGNS ............................................................................................................................... 4 2.1 Parking guidance system (PGS) ......................................................................................................... 4 2.2 Parking Guide ...................................................................................................................................... 4 2.3 Parking Guidance Light ....................................................................................................................... 4 2.4 XALOC ................................................................................................................................................ 5 2.5 Conclusion ........................................................................................................................................... 6

3. DESIGN OBJECTIVES AND REQUIREMENTS ....................................................................................... 6 3.1 Design Attributes ................................................................................................................................. 6 3.2 Engineering Characteristics ................................................................................................................. 7 3.3 Design Objectives ................................................................................................................................ 9 3.4 Requirements .................................................................................................................................... 10 3.5 Product Positioning Chart .................................................................................................................. 10

4. CONCEPT GENERATION AND SELECTION ........................................................................................ 11 4.1 Concept Designs ............................................................................................................................... 11 4.2 Final Concept Selection using Pugh Chart: ....................................................................................... 15

5. PRODUCT DESCRIPTION: .................................................................................................................... 16 6. Engineering Functionality Analysis: ......................................................................................................... 17

6.1 Identification of System (introduction to design constraint): .............................................................. 17 6.2 Design Optimization model: ............................................................................................................... 18

7. EMOTIONAL AND AESTHETIC ANALYSIS ........................................................................................... 22 8. MICROECONOMIC ANALYSIS .............................................................................................................. 23

8.1 Bill of Materials (BOM) ....................................................................................................................... 24 8.2 Costs ................................................................................................................................................. 25

9. Marketing Analysis ................................................................................................................................... 26 9.1 Market Size ........................................................................................................................................ 26 9.2 Breakeven Analysis ........................................................................................................................... 27 9.3 Marketing Strategy ............................................................................................................................ 27 9.4 Market Example ................................................................................................................................. 27

10. Product Development Process .............................................................................................................. 29 11. Product Broader Impact ......................................................................................................................... 30 12. CONCLUSION ....................................................................................................................................... 31

References ...................................................................................................................................................... 32 APPENDICES ................................................................................................................................................. 33

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1. INTRODUCTION

1.1 Design Problem People travel with private vehicles in cities most of the time. Finding a vacant parking spot in both open air and closed or indoor parking lots (e.g. parking areas of mall, cinema, university, etc.) during their busy time can be a frustrating experience. On the other hand, even though parking areas are expanded to increase available spots, people still tend to search for an ideal parking location, instead of driving directly to an available spot. As a result, cars rush to areas that are close to the entrance of facilities. What is worse, some drivers waste their time by making wrong turns to search row by row, which may also exacerbate traffic problems in crowded areas. Based on this observation, we developed the design problem statement as to design a product for people seeking an empty parking spot in order to help them find an ideal location more easily and quickly.

1.2 Personas and User Scenarios Our design targets on those open air parking lots which have high visiting rate and are usually crowded with heavy traffic. The people who will benefit from our design are drivers, and inderectly the facility owners if the parking lot is for profit. We have two segments of typical users: Persona 1: One who has limited time for parking Imagine a University student, 25 years old, who lives off-campus and drives to school every day. He is frustrated by a big parking lot full of cars. It costs him 5-10 minutes to drive through it, looking for available spots, and in worse case he has to turn to another parking lot eventually. Persona 2: A woman who prefers a parking location close to her destination Consider a married woman, 45 years old, who wants to minimize the walking distance to her destination. She will drive directly to the area that is close to her destination, searching row by row, hoping occasionally to find a vacant spot. [Detailed personas and scenarios in Appendix “A”]

1.3 Motivation and Team’s Competency Before finalizing a problem to work on, our team focused on identifying some issue faced by people in their daily life. After hours of discussion and research, we identified According to the needs from the parkers, we summarized the main issue here is that there is no efficient way to inform people of available parking spots and their location at the moment. Though some previous designs, usually for closed parking structures, show the number of vacant spots, it is still unclear where the spots are and how exactly to reach them. Our design proposes to provide clear guidance in open air parking lots while also taking into consideration the public need of finding ideal parking spots efficiently. Our team consists of members having solid backgrounds in Automotive Engineering, Mechanical Engineering and Information technology fields.

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2. PREVIOUS DESIGNS

2.1 Parking guidance system (PGS) The parking guidance system display tells you how many parking lots are available on each level or area as shown in Fig. 1. However, the problem with this is that you can not find an available spot right away. The number of available spots is displayed by row.

Figure 1: Parking guidance system show the drivers number of parking lots available [1]

2.2 Parking Guide One design concept from Taiwan called the Parking Guide was patented by Shih Chang Chi, Huang Shao Heng, and Wang Shou Yu [2]. They proposed a parking ticket which incorporates tailored information to aid drivers. The information is produced by a space-monitoring technology, assigning each drivers or entrant an available spot to park your car. The information locates the nearest spot when a car enters the parking area. Drivers receive a parking card from the machine when they enter the gate of the parking structure or parking tower. The parking card indicates the spots which are available at the moment the card is printed as shown in Figure 2. However, because of this, drivers may not always be able to get the available spot they want as other drivers may take that spot.

Figure 2: Driver receives parking card at entrance of parking structure, Parking guide indicates spots which are available and serves as a map to parking lot [3]

2.3 Parking Guidance Light The Parking Guidance Light is suitable for indoor parking or multi-level parking buildings. The parking guidance indicator guides drivers to the nearest available parking spot. Each parking spot has a sensor and LED

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light located above it to detect parked cars. The LED light is green when the parking spot is empty and red when the parking spot is occupied as shown in Figure 3. The LED light informs drivers whether a parking spot is available or not. Therefore, the clearly visible lights allow the drivers to find a parking spot quickly and save their time in searching for a parking spot. However, the parking guidance indicator is usually used in the indoor parking space, parking structure, or parking building. It cannot use in the open parking lots.

Figure 3: LED lights installed above each parking spot detects spot’s availability status [4]

2.4 XALOC Researchers, José López Vicario and Antoni Morell, from Spain’s Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB) have developed a system that detects free parking spots. XALOC (Xarxes de sensors per a la gestió d'Aparcaments públics i LOCalització) is based on new positioning technology offering more precision in urban areas than GPS technology.

Figure 4: XALOC shows drivers location of available parking space through internet [5]

Each parking spot in the system has a wireless sensor embedded in the middle of the parking space. These sensors tell drivers whether the space is occupied or not. A server processes the information, indicates panels located in the street, and displays the information in real time as shown in Figure 4. The system functions like a GPS displayed on the user’s mobile terminal (smartphone, PDA etc). Once the car is detected, the navigator communicates with XALOC's central server and reports to the driver the number of available car park spaces in the area and where they are located. However, the drivers must use their smartphone or PDA to find an empty parking lot on the internet which is not safety for the drivers. In other cases, some people do not even have capable devices. Lastly, people may not just want to go through this whole technical process to find a parking spot.

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2.5 Conclusion The previous designs are not good enough for people to find a spot easily and save their time. In one of the previous designs, people have to enter their smart phone or PDA on internet to find an available spot. It is unsafe and inconvenient for the drivers. And, most of the previous designs like Parking Guidance Light and PGS are suitable only for closed parking structures, and not for open parking lot. Again, it can get very tedious to drive and read a card simultaneously which is the case with Parking Guide design. Due to these reasons, every time people enter an open parking lot, chances are high that they will spend a lot of time and waste the car’s fuel to find the available spots. Therefore, we conclude that there is a need to design a product for people seeking an empty parking spot in the open parking lot in order to find an ideal location more easily and quickly.

3. DESIGN OBJECTIVES AND REQUIREMENTS Our team determined user attributes, or properties by which the user may evaluate our product, for our design problem to be easy to follow, functionality, reliability, time efficiency, visibility of light signals, ideal location, and safety. Requirements of all these attributes would be taken care by meeting the minimum value requirements of some measurable parameters which are called as Design Characteristics. In addition to the user attributes, we determined two business attributes which are crucial for our design to be accepted by our customers and will help in making a compelling business plan. Those attributes are Cost and Ease of installation. Each of these attributes and characteristics has been described below in detail.

3.1 Design Attributes Some user attributes, or properties by which the user may evaluate our product, includes easy to follow, functionality, reliability, time efficiency, visibility of light signals, ideal location, and safety. In addition to the user, some customer attributes includes inexpensiveness and ease of installation. Easy to follow refers to the degree of difficulty users have in how to use the product. Users will want a product that they can intuitively use to find the closest empty spot. A difficult to use product will only complicate the problem. Functionality is how well the product functions, independent of how effective it is in resolving the problem. Users will want a product that is consistent in its functions and works well. Reliability refers to the level of dependency users will have on the product. In other words, will the user be able to trust the product without doubt that it will successfully guide them to an empty spot without extraneous navigation? Doubt in the reliability of a product will render it untrustworthy and users will instead find alternative ways of navigating around a parking lot and ultimately customers will disregard the product. Time efficiency is one of the most important attributes users will use to judge the product. Our product aims to reduce the amount of time people spending driving around in a parking lot searching for an empty spot. This can be measured by calculating the difference in time between a user driving around for a spot using our product and a user driving around for a spot without using our product.

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Visibility of signals is closely interrelated to easy to follow. However, visibility focuses more on the physical aspects of easy to follow associated with characteristics such as intensity of light and height of signals. The signals should be visible from any part of the parking lot. An important aspect of parking for people is finding an ideal location. Often people will want to find a spot that is closest to the entrance or destination to minimize the walk distance. Our product aims to clearly identify areas of the parking lot which contain an empty spot and full. From there, it is up to the judgment of the user to pick an empty spot. Also, because people’s interpretation of ideal location varies, our product gives freedom to the user to choose their parking spot. Safety of the product is an attribute to consider, but may not be the most important to user for this product. It should be considered in the event of an accident or uncontrollable weather conditions. From a business perspective, the product is targeted for customers including managers or owners of these open and closed parking lots. Thus, how economical the product is will be a key attribute in determining the level of interest of the customers. In addition to cost, customers will also be looking for the ease of installation of the product. Parking lots vary by location so there is no standard for the installation of the product. Instead, the installation of the product will be optimally tailored for each parking lot.

3.2 Engineering Characteristics Engineering characteristics are nothing but a way of measuring design attributes so that we can quantify them and come up with minimum requirements for the product to be successful. Each of the above mentioned design attribute has been converted to a quantifiable variable whose vale we would be measuring. These variables or characteristics are Luminous intensity of light signals, height of light signal, distance between light signal poles, time of response, sensitivity of sensors, elasticity of pole material, and insulation property of materials. Each of these characteristics along with the measurement technique for these has been defined in the subsequent paragraphs. The height of light signal is the distance from the ground to the light signal. It accounts for attributes such as visibility, easy to follow, and saving user’s time. It can be measured through a common measuring tape. The human eye can only see light in the visible spectrum and has different sensitivities to light of different wavelengths within the spectrum. When adapted for bright conditions, the eye is most sensitive to greenish-yellow light at 555 nm. Luminous intensity is defined as a standardized model of the sensitivity of the human eye. In the context of this project, we define this characteristic as a measure of sensitivity of human visual perception of brightness which is nothing but simply a way of measuring visibility of the light. Following formula is used to calculate Luminous intensity of light:

Where

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Iv is the luminous intensity in Candelas (cd), Ie is the radiant intensity in Watts per Steradian (W/sr),

is the standard luminosity function. Keeping the distance between two adjacent light signal poles optimum is an important factor as it will help users identifying their ideal parking location quickly and efficiently. It can be measured through a common measuring tape. The time elapsed from the moment a vehicle enters or leaves a parking slot till the moment light signal goes green or red respectively is the time response. Measurement of this characteristic will depend upon the type of sensor we would be installing. All types of sensors have a response measuring technique. Following describes this characteristic precisely in terms of series of events that account for it: t = 0 t = t1 t = t2

From above, time of response = t1 + t2 Sensitivity of sensors is defined as the ability of sensors to sense the presence or absence of car both correctly and quickly. This characteristic is crucial to get an effective functionality and thus the reliability. It will be measured mathematically, formula depending upon the sensor we would be using and the same would be verified through testing and experimental results. We have decided to use Ultrasonic Sensors of 1 feet range. Most important characteristic for customers would be the Cost as discussed in Attributes section above. While we will try to make the product as efficient and inexpensive as possible, it’s cost will be determined once the product is ready. Ease of installation will actually depend upon the both product and the parking lot structure. However it should not be difficult to install the system as it does not involve rigorous construction work, This characteristic, keeping in mind the customer’s expectations, will be defined by the time taken for the actual instalment (excluding the planning and labour required for installation as that would be done by installation team themselves).

Event 1 Vehicle enters or

leaves parking slot

Event 2 Sensor senses event 1 and sends appropriate

signal to light pole

Event 3 Light pole receives

signal from sensor and light goes green or red

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ATTRIBUTES AND CHARACTERISTICS: MATRIX RELATIONSHIP

Table 1: Matrix mapping attributes to characteristics, 1-3 scale indicating level of relationship

3.3 Design Objectives Our team determined the two objectives which will drive our design as Height of poles and number of poles. We need to determine the best height of the light poles which will facilitate quick view of lights installed at the top from driver’s seat. We also need to determine the right number of poles that should be used for a given parking lot. We have determined our design variables later in the report keeping in mind these objectives. We would be minimizing the number of poles so that it takes care of all of the cost, visibility and functionality issues. From a business perspective, the product is targeted for customers including managers or owners of these open parking lots. Thus, the cost of the product is key attribute in determining the level of interest of the customers. Keep in mind that the customer may not necessarily be the user. In fact, most users will not consider cost in evaluating our product. The cost needs to be affordable for our customers such that they see benefits in installing our product to enhance the driving experience of their customers. This gives us another reason to minimize the number of poles which would mean minimizing the lights, wires and everything related to it.

CHARACTERISTICS

Height of Poles

Number of poles

Luminous intensity of light signals

Distance between poles

Time of response

Sensitivity of sensors

Electricity Consumption

Total cost of the product

Time taken to install the system

AT

TR

IBU

TE

S

Easy to follow 3 3 1

Functionality 2 2 3 3

Reliability 1 1 3 2 3

Time efficiency 3 2 2 2

Visibility of signals 3 3 2 1

Ideal location 2 3

Safety

Cost 2 3 2 3 3 Ease of Installation 1 2 3

TOTAL (level of relationship)

14 14 8 8 7 6 6 3 3

OBJECTIVES REQUIREMENTS

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3.4 Requirements Naturally, the remaining characteristics become requirements and they are equally important however they are not going to drive the design of product. Our team will have to meet certain requirements regarding these characteristics in addition to the objectives, the driving attributes, noted above. An important aspect of parking for people is finding an ideal location. Often people will want to find a spot that is closest to the entrance or destination to minimize the walk distance. Our product aims to clearly identify areas of the parking lot which contain an empty spot and full. From there, it is up to the judgment of the user to pick an empty spot. Also, because people’s interpretation of ideal location varies, our product gives freedom to the user to choose their parking spot.

3.5 Product Positioning Chart Following graph shows a graphical representation of some of the currently available parking solutions vs. our Target Design. As stated in Previous Designs section (Section 2), none of the currently available market products have been able to perform perfectly, i.e. best in terms of both time efficiency and ease of follow. We have determined these two as most important user attributes and have targeted to maximize the same through our concept design.

Figure 5: Product Positioning Chart

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4. CONCEPT GENERATION AND SELECTION

4.1 Concept Designs After hours of brainstorming, our team came up with following five design concepts. Some of them are purely out of the box which really helped us looking at the solution from various angles. 1) Conveyor belts underneath: Inspiration: Travelator Explanation: Imagine a Travelator, a moving pavement for transporting pedestrians used in an airport. Using the same concept and modifying it a bit to meet parking requirements, we thought of creating a parking lot platform package which will have conveyer belts underneath every parking spot. To illustrate, assume a single row of 5 parking spots, all being occupied. As soon as one parking spot, say 3rd, becomes available, all the conveyer belts before that parking spot, i.e. 1st and 2nd, will start moving and both of them will make half rotation so that all the cars on them gets shifted to the adjacent one. This way the car on 2nd spot will be transferred to the 3rd one and one on 1st spot to 2nd making the 1st spot available. This way a new person will just have to leave his car on 1st parking spot and it will be taken to an empty parking spot on its own. Advantages: Quick, Easy to follow Limitations: Very unsafe, Very costly, No consideration for ideal location

Figure 6: Conveyer Concept

2) Arrows on the ground: Inspiration: Road Signs

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Explanation: Just like road signs are used to guide people, we thought of putting arrows on ground and operate them through some parking logic. It is a simple but logical arrangement of light arrows on ground which will turn green or red based on parking availability in a particular row. Logic used to send signals to arrows can be sensors that can sense the presence of a car in a parking spot and send appropriate signal to a microprocessor which in turn sends signals to arrows to go green or red. Advantages: Visual guiding, Easy to follow Limitations: Not very reliable, Bad visibility of signals, Difficult to find ideal location

Figure 7: Arrows Concept

3) Overhead Mirror: Inspiration: View of city at night from some elevated place Explanation: We thought of something that can show a person everything about parking lot at a glance. First thing that we thought of was to provide the immediate photograph or video of the parking lot using some Camera installed in the parking slot in conjunction with some screen in car. An improved version of the same concept was to provide the same thing without any camera or involving installation of a compatible car screen. We thought of putting a big giant mirror the top of parking slot. Now people can just see upwards and themselves find out the right location for them. Advantages: Time efficient, Reliable, Easy to find ideal location Limitations: Difficult to follow, No functionality, Somewhat unsafe

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Figure 8: Overhead Mirror Concept 4) GPS/Mobile application: Inspiration: Google maps Explanation: Just like any other hi-tech mobile app, we thought of creating a mobile application which provides user the information of available parking spot. It will just guide users the route to nearest parking spot available to his/her destination. Advantage: Precise data, Easy to follow

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Limitation: Not reliable as anyone else may occupy the position before you reach there, time consuming as you will have to perform some sort of interaction with your mobile and drive at the same time too which is again unsafe.

Figure 9: GPS Concept

5) Light poles: Inspiration: Mathematical brackets i.e. ( ) or [ ] Explanation: This concept is based on the basic principle of intuitive decision making. Human beings naturally apply what they learn in their daily life to the life’s unknown problems too. For instance, as soon as we see any high impression, we intuitively know that we have to push it because we know that a button has to be pushed, not rotated or pulled. This way we find it easy to figure out the functioning of some unknown products too. Similarly, we know that anything enclosed in a bracket corresponds to an entity. We combined these two concepts of intuitive decision making and general learning and came up with this design concept. We thought of installing equidistant poles having lights at the top of the poles. We determined shape of the lights so that two adjacent lights will form a closed circular or square bracket i.e. ( ) or [ ] so that people can intuitively decide that they are conveying some information about enclosed area (entity). Based on whether a parking spot is available or not, which will be checked using sensors, these light pairs will turn red or green. Basic idea still remains same and simple which is to provide users a complete view of parking spot at a glance most efficiently. Advantages: Easy to follow, Easy to locate Ideal location, Signals clearly visible, Safe Limitations: Not very reliable, Less time efficiency in some specific cases when someone takes the position you are targeting for.

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Figure 10: Lights Concept

4.2 Final Concept Selection using Pugh Chart: We compared each of the above mentioned concepts against our design attributes to do a comparative analysis of concepts. Following shows the detailed concept matrix: Pugh’s Chart: Design Concepts Vs. Attributes A detailed comparison of each of the above mentioned concepts has been done in the concept matrix (Table 2) below where we have rated all the concepts against all our design attributes. It clearly shows that the concept of having light poles is the best suitable option to consider as it has received maximum rating in terms of fulfilling the need or user attributes.

DESIGN CONCEPTS

Conveyer Arrows Mirror Lights GPS

AT

TR

IBU

TE

S

Easy to Follow 3 2 1 2 3 Functionality 1 2 1 3 2 Reliability 1 2 3 2 1 Time Efficient 3 2 3 2 1 Visibility of Signals n/a 2 n/a 3 n/a

Ideal Locations 1 2 3 3 1 Safety 1 3 2 3 3

TOTAL (21) --> 10 15 13 18 11 Table 2: Matrix mapping attributes to concepts, 1-3 scale indicating level of relationship

One impressive concept was the mirror concept. We saw that people do not need to do anything except just look at the top. However the functionality is not that promising. But from there we extracted that we must tarhet keeping our design simple and easy to understand by users. Similarly, after analyzing the merits and demerits of all of the above mentioned design concepts and extracting their unique features, we finally came up with an optimized design concept of “Hotspot”. Main concept behind “Hotspot” is using light poles, the 5th one above. It is based on the inspiration that visual inspection is most convenient for human beings when it comes to decision making and our design is an attempt to make best use of this principle by incorporating various

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elements. Again whether such a solution is effective or not, is determined by the reliability of information available to users. In other words, be it brackets or arrows, decision making can be done best through visual inspection, provided the information being referred is reliable. One change that we have made from the concept discussed in no. 5 above is to use just one light instead of two in order to enable users find parking spot. It has benefits of simple design, easy to understand by user by self teaching, and low cost.

5. PRODUCT DESCRIPTION: As shown in the figure below, the product consists of a simple arrangement of LED lights on poles with ultrasonic sensors buried in the ground in each parking spot. Also number of light poles are fewer than numer of parking spots. To explain, one light covers certain range of spots on its either side. Therefore, if a particular light is green, user will know that particular “area” has some availability. It will not tell user the exact location of spot but he will know the region in which spot is available. However that region is really small as compared to the size of parking lot. Distance between two poles will depend upon the overall size of the parking lot however typically one pole is intended to convey information for 4 parking spots on its left and 4 on its right side. Turning the LED’s green and red will be determined by sensors (ultrasonic sensors). A particular light will remain green until all the spots in its range are not occupied. Once all of them get occupied, it will turn red. This way, user will know that if it’s green, at least one space in it’s vicinity is available otherwise there is no space in that region. Electrical cables will be used to supply power to LED lights and sensors. As it can be seen, the product is simple yet effective and will result in real time and fuel saving for the users. Customers such as mall owners will be benefited by more people visiting their facility as this product makes their parking lot preferred over other busy ones.

Figure 11: Hotspot Layout

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6. Engineering Functionality Analysis:

6.1 Identification of System (introduction to design constraint): In order to come up with a sound design optimization model, we looked at our product from System Engineering perspective. We tried to determine the system boundaries of our product and we concluded that we have two most important features that must be included in system diagram in order to analyze it completely. Those features are nothing but the car driver himself and the light at the top of the pole. Immediately after entering the parking lot, driver will search for a green light which is closest to his destination (ideal location for him) and will keep moving towards it. He might look at it repeatedly depending upon the size of the parking lot. However, once he has reached near the light, he would not need to look at it again and will just go and park the car in the empty spot. Now, we must note here that, for this concept to function properly, driver must be able to see the light at the top of pole easily, both from the farthest point as well as the closest point (constraints). If he is able to do that, he will not have any difficulty in finding his ideal location easily and quickly. Rest needs to be ensured by the functionality of the product which includes sensors, wires and lights. With this background, we are in a good position to define our design optimization model. Following describes the viewpoint and assumption made while drawing the system diagram: Viewpoint: This system map is built to analyze the ability of the product to help driver park the car. It does not show the process of light turning Green from Red. Note that initial state of light is Green. Assumption: Parking spot remains available throughout i.e. no one else occupies it in the meanwhile.

Figure 12 System Map

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6.2 Design Optimization model: Step 1) Selection of set of variables to describe design alternatives: Based on the discussion above and the system model, we deduced that following are our design variables:

- Height of the poles - Distance between poles

Step 2) Determining the objective function in order to maximize/minimize it: We determined that our objective is to minimize the number of poles used. We can determine the number of poles as described below:

No. of poles per lane, N = !"#$%&  !"  !"#  !"#$%&'  !"#$  !"#$%&'(  !"#$""%  !"#$%

Which gives, N = !"#$%&  !"  !"#  !"#$%&'  !"#$  

!"#$%  !"  !"#  !"#$  ∗  !".!"  !"#$!  !"#$""%  !"#  !"#$% …Eq1

Now, if two poles have “p” no. of spots in between them, it means one pole is covering half of the spots (p/2) and the remaing half is being covered by the other pole. Therefore, one pole covers p/2 number of spots on its one side, and thus it can be deduced that it covers a total of p/2+p/2=p number of spots. Therefore, no. of spots between two poles i.e. p = total number of spots covered by one pole ...Eq2 From Eq 1 and Eq 2, we have:

N = !"#$%&  !"  !"#  !"#$%&'  !"#$  

!"#$%  !"  !"#  !"#$  ∗  !"!#$  !"#$%&  !"  !"#$!  !"#$%$&  !"  !"#  !"#$ …Eq3

Now, we need to determine total no. of spots covered by one pole which in our case is nothing but an intuitive decision to be made by driver and we need to assist driver making that deciosn easily through caluculations. We need to make sure that we keep the distance between poles optimum so that driver can connect the height of the pole to the range (no. of spots) it corresponds to. Now we know from illumination theory that for two light sources at some distance apart, Illuminance is inversely proprtional to square of the distance between light sources. However, we are not using lights for illumination purpose here. We are using them just as signals. With reference to illumination theory, published papers and government guidelines (please see References), we concluded that we can assume an inverse relationship between height of the poles and number of poles used per lane. To explain, more the height of the poles, more can be considered its range of spots on either side and thus lesser would be the number of poles required per lane. With this argument, we can assume the following relationship: Total number of spots covered by one pole = K * H , where K is a constant, H is height of a pole. …Eq4 From Eq3 and Eq4,

N = !"#$%&  !"  !"#  !"#$%&'  !"#$  !"#$%  !"  !"#  !"#$  ∗  !  ∗  !

Now, for a given parking lot, length of any of its parking lane and a parking spot is constant. Therefore, it can be seen that N is just a function of H. Therefore, N=f(H), and objective is to mimimize f(H).

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Where f(H) = L/wKH …Eq5 (L - length of one parking lane, w- width of one spot) Step 3) Determining the constraints: As discussed in system identification above, our design constraint is: Light should be visible from both farthest and nearest locations. Although farthest location would vary and depends upon real parking lot layout, we define farthest location as the diagonally opposite entrance of the parking lot. Nearest location is defined as the last point from where driver will look at the light. After this point, he/she would not need to look at the light to find his parking spot. He/she will just drive to the spot after this point. That distance can vary from driver to driver. Step 4 below analyzes the nearest location in more detail. Step 4) Detrmination of acceptable designs based on permissible range of design variables: We need to determine minimum and maximum permissible height of the poles and finally we will choose the value that will minimize the objective function f(H). Farthest location: For driver sitting inside the car, it is not difficult to see something high from a far away location. He/she can see as high as sky (if its real far) however there is a minimum height that must be maintained so that nothing comes in his/her line of sight and he/she can see the object clearly. Therefore, from diagram above, we have: Height of pole = h + H1 (where h=1.3m for a standard car) Minimum permissible height = 1.3 + L1 tanθ1 …Eq6 Maximum permissible height = ∞ Nearest location: Similarly, for a driver to be able to see something from nearest location, he/she can see something as low as ground (provided nothing obstructs his line of sight which is almost the case for nearest location) however there is a limit on highest point he/she can see because of the roof of the car. So we need find that maximum height which he/she can easily see. Therefore, from diagram above, we have: Height of pole = h + H2 Maximum permissible height = 1.3 + L2 tanθ2 …Eq7 Minimum permissible height = 0 From Eq6 and Eq7, it can be concluded that: Min permissible height for farthest location < height of pole < Max permissible height for nearest location, or (1.3 + L1 tanθ1) < H < (1.3 + L2 tanθ2) …Eq8 Eq8 above defines our feasible domain of design variable. Any design in this range is an acceptable design however we chose one that minimizes the f(H) i.e. H must be maximum. From above discussion, design optimization problem can be defined as follows:

Minimize f(H) = !

!"#

so that, Visibility of light(H) ϵ True and (1.3 + L1 tanθ1) < H < (1.3 + L2 tanθ2)

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Diagramatic representation of parking lot and illustrations of angles:

L1=20m

2.5m

L1=10m

H1  =  1.3m

H2

θ  

L2

L1θ  

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Figure 13: Engineering parameters Consider a parking lot which is 42.5m*30m in size as shown above in the diagram. Suppose one spot of a parking lot is 2.5m wide. For “x” no. of spots, length would be given by: ( ) 2.5L x x=

For nearest location: As mentioned earlier, nearest location may vary depending upon driver’s preference. Let us suppose nearest location from where driver would want to see the light is the 4 spots away from the destination spot. Maximum height of light,

( ) ( ) tantotal carH x H L x θ= + 4x = (The closest position to the light)

30θ °= (maximum angle of sight) 1.3carH = (height of driver’s eye from ground) (4) 7.070( )totalH m=

If nearest location is 8 spots away, 8x =

30θ °= 1.3carH = (8) 12.840( )totalH m=

Similarly calculating maximum permissible heights for neares locations defined by 1 to 8 spots away, we get following heights:

#Spots Length of Spots Permissible Height of pole

1 2.5 2.7425 2 5 4.185 3 7.5 5.6275 4 10 7.07 5 12.5 8.5125 6 15 9.955 7 17.5 11.3975 8 20 12.84

For farthest location: As defined in Step 3, we define this location as the diagonally opposite end of parking lot. Therefore, farthest location = 45.2! + 30! = 52.02m Minimum height of light: H = 1.3 + 52.02 tan θ1 We observed that θ1 for farthest location is 5 degrees. Putting this into equation above, H = 1.3 + 52.02 tan 5 H(min) = 5.81m

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Figure 14: Engineering Optimization Result

From above calculations and design model, we can see that minimum height of the pole needs to be 5.81 m (for the parking lot size assumed i.e. 42.5m * 30m). Also maximum height varies depending upon the location which we call the nearest one from where driver would want to see the light. However, we need to maximize the height to minimize the f(H) which is our objective. Therefore, we choose height of 7.07 m which is the maximum permissible height for when nearest loaction is 4th spot from destination spot.

7. EMOTIONAL AND AESTHETIC ANALYSIS We had realized since the very beginning that effectiveness of our product will lie in how simple, yet efficient, we can make it. Reason being people cannot take much effort while driving to decide upon one parking location. To give our product aesthetic appeal, we decided to use LED lights which are both efficient and aesthetically appealing. A more detailed explanation of emotional consideration in our design has been given in the Concept Generation and Selection section (4.1 and 4.2) above. Using our final concept design, we were able to keep our design both simple and aesthetically appealing.

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8. MICROECONOMIC ANALYSIS

Assumption: Although all existing products are used in closed parking structures, we assume that they can enter the open parking market at any time and thus can be considered as competitors. Definition of “Set”: We define a Set as all the components associated with one pole.

Based on our research, we summarized the sales data of similar products in the market. Note that all the existing products are guidance systems for parking structures. We found the price of existing products and mapped them all to our product so that prices can be measured on a single scale of “price per set”. Following table shows data for each product:

From graph above, we calculated the demand function as: Q = θ - λ! * P = 2772.68 - 53.73 * P (Note: here P denotes Price/30) Optimal Revenue Price Calculation: R = pq = p(θ - λ! * P) To optimize, we set derivatives equal to zero. Therefore, !"!"= 0

Product Price per Set Price per Set/30 (scaled down to 1/30)

Quantity

PGS 1050 35 700

XALOC 600 20 1800

Parking Light 1350 45 590

Parking Guide 840 28 1400

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!"!"

= !(!""!.!"!!!".!"!!)

!"

P = !""!.!"!"#.!"

P = 25.8 From above calculation, scaling up the value of P to get the price: Price value for optimal Revenue= 25.8 * 30 = $774 The amount of material required for our product depends on the size of the parking lot in which it is installed. The bill of materials below outlines the materials, quantity, price etc for an assumed parking lot having 100 parking spots. A set is defined as the components associated with each pole. Each set will consist of two LED light bulbs (one for both sides of row), 16 ultrasonic sensors (4 front left row + 4 front right row + 4 back left row + 4 back right row), wire, and other components such as a backup battery. Knowing the cost of a set will simplify calculations for the total material cost. The information in the bill of materials outlines realistic targets for dimensions/specs and pricing for our product.

8.1 Bill of Materials (BOM) (For a parking lot of size 100 spots)

Components Dimension/Spec Source Quantity Unit Price (USD)

Subtotal (USD)

LED light bulb

3.5 Watt Honeywell HWL1R20501B

25 37.19 929.75

Ultrasonic Sensor

1 feet range McNaughton 100 50.00 5000.00

Steel pole 7.07 m Stock 12.5 11.78 147.25

Wire 125 ft Stock 1 50.00 50.00

Total Cost $6127.00/lot or, $61.27/spot

Table 3: Bill Of Materials (*other parts may include pole mounting kit, sensor surface kit, backup battery, etc.) Price per Set: 37.19*2 + 16*50 + 11.78 + 8 = $ 894.16 This price is just a little higher than the price value for optimal revenue which is $774.

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8.2 Costs

Fixed Costs

Initial Fixed Cost

Product design $150,000

Patent $30,000

Usability Testing 20000

Subtotal $ 200,000

Annual Fixed Costs

Administrative fee $50,000

Employment $750,000

Tax $50,000

Insurance $50,000

Marketing cost $50,000

R&D $50,000

Subtotal $1,300,000

Variable Costs (per unit)

BOM 6127.00

Table 4: Fixed and Variable Costs Fixed costs: We defined our fixed costs to be costs that we will initially incur to begin our business. These costs are incurred once (or per year) and do not change over time. Our initial investments include product design, testing, and patenting. In addition, there are fixed costs that are incurred once a year such as administrative costs, insurance, taxes, and marketing. Variable costs (per unit): Our bill of materials outlines materials on a per unit basis. The variable costs will depend on the size of the parking lots. The larger the parking lot the more material, labour, transportation, and packaging is required. For us as the manufacturer, the cost will be: Total investment = initial investment + (annual fixed cost + variable costs * demand) * year Our team needs to know the total cost in the long run in order to determine a price at which we can sell our product. This will also help us to determine how much profit we can earn over the long run.

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9. Marketing Analysis

9.1 Market Size According to the U.S. Census Bureau, it is estimated that there are more than 105 million commercial parking spaces1 in the country. Referring to another report from Victoria Transport Policy Institute that the portion of

open parking spaces is about 55% while 10% of them are considered busy, we determine the market size for parking guidance system is 5,775,000 spaces. Combined with the market share we get from our Choice-Based Conjoint analysis, ultimately we will have a total market of 2,000,000 spots as demonstrated in the Table 2 below.

Table 5: Outline of market and cost values In the following Table 3, we estimate the annual customer reached in a five-year period. Since the product will

be developed and tested before deploying to the market, we expect a small portion of the market in the first year. Considering the advantages of Hotspot, our customers will begin to grow from the second year and will reach a total 680,000 spots installation at the end of the fifth year.

Table 6: Annual Customer Reached

1 Parking space refers to the parking spot for one car. Parking experts differ widely on the figure with ranges from 100 million to 750 million.

Total Market (5 yr) 2,000,000 Spots Our Market Reach (34%) 680,000 Spots Initial Fixed Cost $200,000 Annual Fixed Cost $1,300,000 Variable Cost $6227/lot Price $15,000/lot

Market Size 2,000,000 spots

Year 1 2 3 4 5

Total Consumers 100,000 200,000 400,000 600,000 700,000

Our customers 34299 68598 137196 205794 240093

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9.2 Breakeven Analysis According to the analysis above, we will start making profit from 3rd year and breakeven will be obtained in the fourth year (Figure 15). This is based on the assumptions: 1) the annual inflation rate is 6% for calculating NPV; 2) the market share for Hotspot remains the same in the five years.

Figure 15: Breakeven Analysis Chart

9.3 Marketing Strategy We will launch our marketing campaigns from the first year. The campaigns include 1) Advertising to the parking industry; 2) Contacting local parking lot operators; 3) Developing promotion strategies (e.g. tiered pricing) We can also test the effects of HotSpot on improving parking lot utilization by offering the system to a couple of busy university parking lots. Considering the impact of a well-known institute like University of Michigan, this can be a good way to reach out to the potential market.

9.4 Market Example Considering the scale and the construction complexity of such a guidance system, our potential customers may want to make sure that the installation is profitable. We take the local market in Ann Arbor as an example, and find out that the financial benefit of installing Hotspot is firmly proved. Take Ann Arbor downtown open parking lots as a model market. We collected the quarter data of 6 major surface parking lots considering their capacity, revenue, cost, and ROI (See Table 3). All of the parking lots can be considered our target since their average space utilization rates are over 70%2. Research shows that by

2 Data from Ann Arbor Parking Data http://annarborchronicle.com/2012/11/04/ann-arbor-parking-data-slower-september/

-2000000

-1500000

-1000000

-500000

0

500000

1000000

1500000

2000000

2500000

1 2 3 4 5

Initial Investment

Profit

NPV

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applying the parking guidance systems, the utilization of the parking space will increase by 5-10%. For the paid parking space, it will turn into 10% increase in revenue. Thus, we can expect about $50,000 increase in revenue, which brings the profit to 17%.

Parking Lot Available Space

Revenue($) Budget($) Difference($) %

S. Ashley (Kline Lot) Parking

45 143,973 143,396 578 0.40%

1st & Huron Parking 70 210,542 198,803 11,739 5.90%

5th & Huron Parking 168 29,700 29,018 682 2.35%

1st & William Parking 161 42,444 32,574 9,870 30.30%

415 W. Washington 134 53,192 61,229 (8,037) (13.13%)

Fifth & William 89 63,804 44,933 18,871 42.00% Total 667 543,655 509,953 33703 6.61%

Table 7: Ann Arbor Downtown Surface Parking Lot Statistics

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10. Product Development Process Following chart describes product development process that we followed to come-up with Hotspot:

Figure 16: Product development process for Hotspot

1. Product Planning: Idea Generation, Problem Definition, Design Objective A lot of research and surveys need to be done in order to identify a problem area and finally narrowing it down to one particular problem. A problem statement should be as specific as possible. It involves lot of research and engineering tools such as Quality Function Deployment Matrices (Attributes vs. Characteristics) to come up with final design problem. Mostly a problem statement contains at least two conflicting objectives which makes it challenging to achieve. In our product, we defined the problem as to design a product for people seeking an empty parking spot in the open parking lot in order to find an ideal location more easily and quickly. 2. Conceptual Design: Generation of various concept designs and selecting final concept After defining the problem statement, we need to do conceptualization where various concept designs are made and rough sketches are drawn on paper. We must document every idea and should not consider any idea trivial at this stage. In addition to one’s innovative skills, various tools are available which can be used to come-up with ideas. One such tool used was TRIZ cards. We also tried to identify areas of improvements in existing products. A very important point to be remembered through this stage is not to think about any particular solution and do not criticize any idea while making concepts. One must think with open mind to come-up with as many ideas as possible. Once all concept designs are made, then we must start analyzing/criticizing the ideas and start building final concept design. We applied Morphological Chart Analysis and Brainstorming to

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generate the design concepts. Finally, all the concepts were analyzed and a final design concept was built by combining merits and demerits of all concept designs.

3. Design Embodiment: Making Prototype and Testing Once a concept design is chosen, we start working on prototyping. We decided to use LED light and ultrasonic sensors to detect the presence of cars in our final product however we used CFLs and inductive loop sensors to demonstrate our concept design. Once a prototype is made, it is put on test where its performance is evaluated against all Engineering Characteristics defined in Product Planning Stage. We need to check how well the proposed design concept and prototype satisfies the objectives and requirements of the product. If prototype does not yields desired results, we need to iterate through concept generation stage and redesign our prototype. We need to consider whether the idea should be abandoned or whether it should be retained for further improvement. We did more than twenty iterations to complete our prototype in this step.

4. Business Planning and Market Launch We did investment analysis and breakeven analysis to show our product benefits. We learnt the importance of this step while doing it. It was great to see how our product will perform in real market. From our Business plan, we deduced that we will break even after 4 years approximately. No matter how well the design may satisfy a particular human need, it cannot be converted into a useful product or process if the details of the design are not communicated to those who will implement its use. Therefore, we exhibit our product in the Michigan Engineering Design Expo on December 6. We explained our ideas and concepts to those who showed interest in the product.

11. Product Broader Impact

Our end product, Hotspot, fully reflects our team values, collectively. Though each member of the team possesses different values in design, those values are drawn out through each step of the process and each decision made, starting from our problem statement. Design becomes an important factor beyond functionality. We have already seen similar, competing products which are certainly functional. Our team aimed to bring certain elements from existing concepts and expand upon the market while maintaining our individual values. Research on existing products showed that parking lot guidance systems existed, but only in closed parking lots. The challenge our team faced was to bring this to the open parking lot market where there is inevitable traffic. Once we established our problem statement and target market, we began to generate concepts. When generating our concepts, we considered previous designs and assumed full functionality, but wanted to expand on these ideas and create a product that is better than the previous products through design. We needed to consider the difference in environments and nature of the users. As previously described, our product is a simple design to help guide drivers navigate through busy parking lots more easily and quickly. The value of a simple design was in fact, a commonality across all members of the team. We used this value to drive our decision making including concept selection.

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Once a simple, easy to follow concept was selected, we made countless minor adjustments particularly through our engineering analysis. Every contribution from individual members in making small adjustments to our selected concept added value to our product. We were able to accommodate the individual values through this stage of the process. For example, a member may value the capability to use our product to as many types of people as possible. A suggestion that would be made is to accommodate for the color blind, or the handicap by adjusting the color of the lights used, or the shape of the lights. The value of our product is the culmination of the individual contributions each individual team member input into the design of our product.

12. CONCLUSION There is a big need for a product which can serve the need of busy parking lots. Our product, Hotspot, is an endeavour towards solving this problem. We realized that there is a lot of engineering complexity involved behind apparent simplicity of the product. Through the facts obtained from Engineering and Cost Analysis, we conclude that Hotspot will prove to be a successful product however since we reach breakeven after 4 years, we must keep updating our product design to meet the changing market’s needs and thus sustain the market. Our product is priced at an amount lower than our competitors. One limitation of Hotspot is that it does not tell you the exact location of available parking spot however our research shows that people are equally satisfied with knowing the area of availability. Future work can include exploring the options of solar energy to fulfil the power requirements for the lights and sensors. We can also extend the usage of Hotspot to city’s parallel parking with suitable design modifications.

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References [1] http://www.unitednathanproductions.com/blog/2006/01/car-week-modern-parking-lot_17.html, 10-08-

2012. [2] Chu, P.Y., Cheng, F.C., Wu, C.F., Huang, S.H., Wang, S.Y., and Shih, C.C., Parking Guide, Taiwan

Patent, M422137, 2012. [3] http://www.red-dot.sg/concept/porfolio/o_e/PS/B002.htm, 10-08-2012. [4] http://www.alibaba.com/product-gs/428284853/Intelligent_Car_Parking_Guidance_System.html, 10-08-

2012. [5] http://www.ubergizmo.com/2010/07/xaloc-helps-you-find-parking-lots/, 10-08-2012. [6] [1] Transportation Cost and Benefit Analysis II – Parking Costs. Victoria Transport Policy Institute (www.vtpi.org).

2012. [7] [2] Mikhail Chester et al 2010 Environ. Res. Lett. 5 034001. Parking infrastructure: energy, emissions, and

automobile life-cycle environmental accounting [8] [3] Development, Community, and Environment Division (1807T).U.S. Environmental Protection

Agency.Washington, DC 20460.EPA 231-K-06-001.January 2006. http://www.epa.gov/livability/pdf/EPAParkingSpaces06.pdf

[9] [4] http://www.mrsc.org/subjects/transpo/pkgdemand.aspx [10] [5] http://annarborchronicle.com/2012/11/04/ann-arbor-parking-data-slower-september/ [11] http://www.nedapavi.com/products/ , 12-02-2012 [12] http://www.tcsintl.com/category/case-studies/, 11-15-2012

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APPENDICES APPENDIX-A: User Persona and Scenarios: Persona 1:

Persona 2:

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APPENDIX – B Analysis Conducted: 1) Our team visited various open parking spaces, for example big parking space behind Duderstadt building,

to understand the issue, design aspects and limitations imposed by the parking area on design and scopes of new designs. We measured angle of line of sight with horizontal to be used in Design optimization model. We found that from a distance, that angle can be as low as 5 degrees and as we get real close, maximum angle upwards can be just 30 degrees. We also observed behaviour of people in those parking spaces and concluded that it would be very helpful if we can come up with something which gives handy information to user about available parking spaces. We also observed that ideal location might differ from person to person based on their destination or some other preferences.

2) We conducted an online survey and received responses from approx 30 people. It helped us in understanding the issue in terms of its severity, willingness of people to spend for parking facilities, people’s behaviour while they try to find a parking spot and other important aspects such as ideal location’s availability and number of hours a location might remain occupied. Survey results proved that people spend a lot of time just circling around a parking lot before finally settling down for a space. Also they are willing to pay extra for a product which can solve this problem.

3) We took a CBC survey of approximately 40 people present in class of APD-2012 who responded to questions related to price and user’s preferences while using our products. Survey results showed that people are most interested in optimum range of a pole (3 parking spots on either side of pole) and cost of the product. Angle of line of sight to light on the pole from driver’s seat did not make any different to their choice. However, we covered angle analysis in our Engineering Optimization model so that it does not cause any visibility issue which if not taken care, involves the risk of rejection of the product.