UCLA Hospital Hopes Smart Garage Expedites Parking

William Kaiser, director of UCLA's Actuated, Sensing, Coordinated and Embedded Networked Technologies (ASCENT) Lab (part of the CENS lab), says Lam and other researchers there have used National Instruments' wireless sensor networking devices for a number of past projects as well—for monitoring everything from energy use within a building to pedestrian traffic flow on the UCLA campus. The devices are affordable, he says, and the university purchases them at a reduced rate for academic institutions.

Electronically monitoring parking-lot occupancy is not new, but most systems utilize networks of wired sensors to collect and distribute information regarding availability. For an existing parking structure, such as that used by the Ronald Reagan Medical Center, the installation costs of such a system can be prohibitively expensive.

"Cutting concrete and running conduit is expensive," Karwaski says. In total, he notes, there are approximately 24,000 parking spaces on the UCLA campus, with room to add fewer than 2,000 additional spots in the future.

"There is a desire to manage the [parking] space capacity to a higher degree of granularity," Karwaski says, "so this project is a win-win because [National Instruments] is providing equipment at low cost, the CENS lab is interested in the experience of building out the system, and we in the transportation department are interested in the benefits, which are twofold. There's the customer service element—signs showing the available spaces—and the administrative benefits of having a better idea of the usage of the structure."