News
Flex celebrates 10 years of maintaining Ford’s prestigious Q1 quality certification in Guadalajara, Mexico
The challenge
Smart cities are now a reality — and a requirement. The overpopulation of urban areas and the accompanying transportation strain requires strategic planning, innovation, and advanced technology to keep pace with ever-evolving transit challenges.
Population expansion and the increase of vehicles amplifies the demand for parking infrastructure. Simultaneously, manual management of parking resources creates the under-utilization of space.
This inefficiency leads to increased traffic congestion, wasted time, and excess air pollution and waste.
That is why smart parking systems (SPS), which assist drivers in intelligently locating parking spaces, will be part of our collective future.
The solution
With our expertise in sensors and connectivity, combined with our Internet of Things (IoT) technologies, we were an ideal candidate to create our own SPS.
Our Plant 5 in Penang, Malaysia recently collaborated on a joint development venture with Universiti Malaysia Perlis (UniMAP). Within three months, we designed and implemented a high-performance system, with additional emphasis on data reliability, security, privacy, and other critical connectivity factors.
The following components were intelligently designed and implemented:
- Parking lot utilization detection by cameras
- Car recognition technology
- Radio-frequency identification (RFID) access capability as a backup subsystem
- Parking lots divided into zones for employees, customers, disabled, and more
- Ability to block individual lots or zones as needed by security
- Three dashboard panels showing all zones and lot vacancies
- All data shared immediately to the IR4.0 database
- All data and communication controlled by four layers of XANDER CS (our FPGA solution) cybersecurity
- Auto-generated reports to authorized personnel for review
Our SPS features cameras with deep learning algorithm capabilities. Real-time data are sent to a centralized hub to continuously update parking allocations. Drivers then use their heads-up display to find the most efficient spot without expending extra time, effort, or fuel.
All data encrypted is powered by our proprietary XANDER CS “brain” that is 100 percent designed and implemented at our Penang Plant 5.
The results
We pride ourselves on applying new ideas like the smart parking system, while creating solutions that are economically and environmentally beneficial for our partners.
Refining and evolving data acquisition technology is at the crux of future SPS benefits. Our continued innovations in wireless communication, data analytics, induction loops, and advanced algorithms will also contribute to creating more adaptable systems in support of our mission to build products that create value and improve people’s lives.
