Its not often that you come across innovation in a carpark, but I was blown away the recently when I pulled into a local carpark, and it looked like someone had forgotten to pull the christmas decorations down. After a double-take, I realised that the christmas tree effect was created by a series of strategically aligned, ceiling mounted lights that glowed red if a car was occupying the space below, and green to designate an empty space.
The effect is amazing. You can quickly spot where there are free spaces right across the entire carpark without having to drive down each row and scan side-to-side to find a free space. With the ease of seeing what parks are available, there would be a huge safety benefit for drivers, as they would be able to better concentrate and look out for pedestrians rather than having to drive their car while simultaneously being a space-hunter.
After pulling into a free park without the normally associated hassle, I was able to examine the setup. When interrupted by a car, a sensor flips the colour of the ceiling mounted light from green to red. I was curious to find out more. Looking at the light, I saw a tiny little sticker branding the system. It's from a company called Beonic. A quick spin around Google turns up that they are a local company who carry out their R&D right here in Adelaide.
As well as improving the parking experience, I would imagine there would be a wealth of data able to be captured on the peaks and troughs of space usage in the carpark. This could be used by the landlord to provide tangible patronage information to potential and existing tenants. You have give it a go yourself to really get a feel for how it flips a typically tedious task of starting the shopping process into a positive and stress-free experience! This is a fantastic innovation that I hope will become standard in carparks all over the world. Hey - it may also increase sales as we all get out of our cars in a much happier frame of mind!
Santos is an Australian oil and gas exploration and production company with high quality assets and projects throughout Australia and the Asia-Pacific region. We recently redesigned and upgraded their corporate website from Helium 2.0 to version 3.0 in order to incorporate a higher level of functionality.
Fusion is excited to announce that the Rundle Lantern won three category awards in the recent 2009 South Australian Architecture Awards. Created by Fusion for the Adelaide City Council, the Rundle Lantern was awarded in the categories of Urban Design, Collaborative design and the prestigious Adelaide Prize.
