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PROVO — Every college student knows the woes of trying to find an empty parking space when they're running late to their 9 a.m. lecture.
A group of BYU students recently won the Student Innovator of the Year competition for their artificial intelligence parking spot tracker that aims to revolutionize paid parking lots by reducing parking violations.
Spot Parking uses an AI tracking system and cameras to detect vehicles when they enter a parking lot and assign them a unique tracking identifier associated with the license plate. The system also categorizes all parking stalls as occupied or unoccupied and the data is passed onto parking police through the Spot Parking app.
Instead of parking police having to drive around and cite illegally parked cars, enforcement officers can use the app's technology to track any illegally parked cars and see where they are and how long they've been there.
According to a release from BYU, approximately 51% of parking violations on college campuses go undetected, which can make finding open spaces difficult for those who paid for parking passes.
"As we're able to more consistently enforce parking policies, the people who park illegally will do so less often, opening up an estimated 27% more spaces on college campuses for people who actually paid for passes," said BYU pre-business student and Spot Parking team member Ryan Hagerty, in the release.
Spot Parking builds upon existing technology of vehicle-mounted license plate recognition cameras and individual parking spot sensors.
The team won $12,000 at the 2024 BYU Student Innovator of the Year competition for their invention. Jim Trent, assistant dean for BYU's College of Engineering, said the Spot Parking team created a lot of buzz among judges at the competition and they scored high in the three categories of engineering, innovation and impact.
"We knew Spot Parking had incredible potential, so we started searching everywhere for funding to help us get our idea off the ground," Hagerty said. "(Student Innovator of the Year) has been an incredible experience to gain recognition and funding. Now we feel like we can really get started with parking enforcement."
The Spot Parking team said it predicts its product will reduce parking enforcement costs by 65%, which adds up when the average university spends around $400,000 a year on enforcing parking. The students anticipate Spot Parking to have a one-time installation fee, plus a yearly subscription that is scaled to the size of the parking enforcement area.
Student Cooper Young said the technology isn't just for universities but could be used to improve parking situations anywhere that has paid parking, such as airports, event venues and more.
The students are working with BYU's parking office to beta test the tech, a release from BYU said. Although the AI tracking accuracy is already at 95% to 97%, the students are hoping to improve the accuracy and add a live, updating feature to show people where available stalls are located.
