naxtlab

2023.02.07

NEXTLab cooperated with KSI and successfully developed outdoor parking control automation technology.

Last year, in November 2022, NEXTLab demonstrated the prototype at the outdoor parking lot located in Samdeok Park, Anyang. People from both NEXTLab and KSI, as well as from companies that were interested in this technology, attended the demo event, and responded positively. After observing the optimistic atmosphere there, NEXTLab decided to apply jointly for the patent with its partner, KSI.  

The new technology applies NEXTLab’s own vehicle detection, vehicle type recognition, and license plate recognition technology, and is differentiated from previous parking control solutions in that it has been refined to guarantee higher recognition accuracy with lower costs. 

<Outdoor Parking Control Solution Summary>

As shown in the picture above, the improved tech recognizes the incoming customer’s vehicle and its license plate and divides the parking lot area into sections to recognize whether a car is parked there and to get parking information. It integrates video information from multiple CCTV cameras installed in the outdoor parking lot, and enables automatic parking control to enhance customer experience in various ways, such as paying parking fees, searching for the parked space of their vehicles, etc.

This technology’s benefits lie in that it provides the same “Find my Car” services in major department store parking lots with lower costs. In Korea, most large shopping malls and buildings have underground parking lots, and since they are huge and complex, often there are unmanned parking control machines that search for the customers’ vehicle location and allow easy payment before leaving the parking lot.

Also, it is not restricted to indoor parking lot areas and can be used to recognize vehicles outdoors, which can be a bit more challenging than doing it indoors. This is because the CCTV camera images may vary more depending on the weather and time of day. Video footage from indoor parking lots will be consistent because the lights and background will be the same, rain or shine. However, outdoor parking lots are different. If there is heavy rain, or it is very foggy, there is always the possibility that license plates may not be clearly visible, thus harder to recognize. Despite these challenges to license plate recognition environment in outdoor parking lots, NEXTLab’s accumulated experience in the field has finally made the breakthrough.

According to NEXTLab’s CEO, Changgeun Lee, the most meaningful part of this technology is that the vehicle recognition algorithm has been upgraded to detect identical vehicles more accurately from diverse angles, thus displaying higher detection accuracy compared to previous vehicle recognition solutions.

KSI’s CEO, Seungho Kim, stated, “With the higher precision in vehicle and license plate detection technology provided by NEXTLab, we can also reduce errors in our smart parking control solution. By cooperating with NEXTLab, we are excited to provide efficient parking management methods to parking lot operators and enhance the parking lot experience of customers.”