RingGo's predictive app wins parking award at Intertraffic

Intertraffic Amsterdam runs 5-8 April

RingGo, the UK-based cashless payment specialist, won the parking category at the Intertraffic Innovation Awards, which took place in Amsterdam  this morning. The awards were part of the opening ceremony of Intertraffic Amsterdam, a traffic technology trade fare that runs at the RAI exhibition centre until 8 April.

Awards were presented in five categories: Traffic Management; Parking; Safety; Smart Mobility; and Infrastructure.

The competition’s Overall Winner was the Czech Republic’s CROSS Zlín for its InVipo product, a smart platform for use in smart cities and intelligent transport system (ITS) projects. InVipo integrates a range of data, including traffic counts, parking availability, traffic signal timings and weather in one web-based visualisation platform.

InVipo also topped the Smart Mobility category, where it competed against Siemens’ Sitraffic SiBike system, which helps to prioritise signals for cyclists; and Parkmobile’s parking payment and reservation solution, which can be fully integrated into a car dashboard.

RingGo, the UK arm of Netherlands-based Parkmobile Group, won the Parking category for a development of its existing app. RingGo has been enabling users to pay for their parking remotely for several years, but the Parking Prediction app offers the ability to check availability of parking spaces in advance and help with navigation to those spaces.

Some availability is made certain through the use of sensors embedded in roads, but what impressed the jury was the development of a predictive algorithm that can tell users what the likely availability is upon arrival, even for spaces that do not have sensors.

RingGo’s commercial director, Harry Clarke, said: “We always try to put the motorist first in what we do, so we’re very pleased to be recognised for this customer-focused innovation. Clever use of real-time data directs drivers to find parking quickly and easily. And it just shows that you don’t need to spend thousands on hardware to help people get on with their lives.”??

Marius Koerselman, general manager for the Parkmobile Group, added: “The team in Basingstoke is well known within Parkmobile for its new ideas and tech development skills.”

Also shortlisted in the parking category were Park Assist’s upgraded M4 Smart-Sensor System, which now includes streaming video surveillance and ANPR data, and HR Groep’s MB Multilayer Parking, a multi-layer bike parking system.

The winner in the Infrastructure category was Smart Ultimate Lighting, created by HR Groep from The Netherlands. The product is a road sign constructed using the same illuminating foil that is used in mobile phone screens. The sign surface itself doubles as a solar panel, thanks to a transparent layer of photovoltaic cells, which means it is self-powering. 

Runners-up in the infrastructure category were Silca Traffic Systems’ Quick-Cube, a self-supporting LED highway light that can be used for roadworks, events and security and Aisico’s ADD_C software, which can be used to aid in drone-based infrastructure surveys.

The Traffic Management category was won by Houston Radar for SpeedLane. The ultra-low power consumption of this multi-lane, side-fire traffic radar means a large amount of hardware into a single solar-powered unit. SpeedLane can monitor, count and classify vehicles in up to eight user-defined lanes. It also includes a camera for visual back-up and ease of installation. Once installed it transmits data to a cloud-based server.

Runner-ups in the Traffic Management category were the Ortana Meteos, a road-weather monitoring system and APM PRO’s OnDynamic, a complete traffic management system that uses Bluetooth-sensors.

The UK’s WheelRight won the Safety category with its Tyre Pressure Technology system. This roadside installation is capable of measuring tyre pressures on vehicle without the need for any mechanical intervention. The vehicle only needs to drive over imbedded sensors for a reading to be made. 

Also shortlisted was the Safer Traffic Platform, created by Safer Place, Israel, which uses video technology to spot high-risk traffic and parking violations. The final product in the shortlist was EBO Van Weel’s vehicle-mounted VMS system.

A record total of 91 exhibiting companies entered the 2016 Intertraffic Innovation Awards. Entrants had to be organisations exhibiting at the event. The five members of the international jury had to shortlist three entrants for each category. The jury then convened on 16 February 2016 for the 15 shortlisted companies to present their innovations in person, based upon which category winners were selected. The overall winner was then selected from the five category winners.

The Intertraffic Innovation Awards 2016 jury

• Dr Peter van der Knaap (Chairman of the Jury) – Managing directoe, SWOV – Institute for Road Safety Research (The Netherlands)
• Peter Martens – Member of the Advisory Council of Directors, European Parking Association and Vexpan (The Netherlands)
• Dr Ben Rutten – Programme manager, Strategic Area Smart Mobility Eindhoven University of Technology (The Netherlands)
• Colin Sowman – Editor, ITS International (UK)
• Tom Stone – Editor, Traffic Technology International (UK)