An Automated Parking System

A dissertation submitted for the Degree of Master

of Information Technology

T. R. Singhara
University of Colombo School of Computing
2020
Declaration

The thesis is my original work and has not been submitted previously for a degree at this or
any other university/institute.
To the best of my knowledge it does not contain any material published or written by another
person, except as acknowledged in the text.

Student Name: Thamali Randula Singhara

Registration Number: 2017/MIT/077

Index Number: 17550773

_____________________

Signature: Date: 19th November 2020

This is to certify that this thesis is based on the work of Mr. Malik Silva under my supervision.
The thesis has been prepared according to the format stipulated and is of acceptable standard.

Certified by:

Supervisor Name: Mr. K.P.M. K Silva

_____________________

Signature: Date:

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Abstract

Drivers become frustrated and got a challenging task when finding out a free and suitable
parking area during rush hours. Traffic congestions will also get increased when drivers make
loops to move through the road to find out a free parking area near the destination. This will
cause accidents and waste the valuable time of drivers. To address all these issues developing
a parking application to find out the nearby parking location areas will become a good solution.
In Sri Lanka, now a days the government will allow drivers to park the vehicle on open street
areas where the payment can be made on a parking meter machine which is monitored by a
parking warden. This project will give an application solution to find out available parking
slots on open parking areas near Colombo city limits. The process of finding free parking areas
will be easy and fast for drivers by using this application.
The aim of this project is to develop a web-based application and a mobile application,
respectively for admin and for the driver and parking warden. The admin has the ability to
manage the parking locations and wardens by assigning particular locations for the wardens
through the web application. At the same time mobile application gives two user views for
parking warden and driver. Parking warden can update the availability or unavailability of slots
which are assigned for the warden. According to the availability of slot, they will show up in
the driver’s application. Once driver opens the application, current location of the driver’s
vehicle is tracked and available parking locations will appears on the map. Driver can get an
idea about the details of parking location by selecting a particular location which gives location
name and the number of available parking slots in that location.
As a user can get a clear idea about how many slots are free out of all the available slots, since
in a situation like moving into a location where having 2 free slots out of 5 available slots has
a low probability of change getting lost of the free slot. As a solution for this, the driver’s
application provides a function to view how many slots are free out of all available slots.
As a future work location update will be automated as driver has to book a particular parking
slot before enter to the location. And when a situation like a vehicle accidently park in a free
slot without knowing, then it take the geo location of the parking slot and using sensors it will
automatically update the slot availability in the system. Then the drivers who use the
application will get more accurate results by automatically updating the free available parking
slots in a particular location.

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Acknowledgement

This would not have been successful without the support of many people. This is a good
opportunity to give sincere thanks of the people who gave their maximum support to make this
effort in success.
I gratefully acknowledge Mr. K.P.M. K Silva, supervisor of the project, for his supervision,
advice, and guidance from the very early stage of this project. Above all and the most needed,
he provided me unflinching encouragement and support in various ways. His truly scientist
intuition has made him as a constant oasis of ideas and passions in teaching, which
exceptionally inspire and enrich our growth as students, and as professionals want to be.
And also, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to University of Colombo School of
Computing for offering this master’s degree program to individuals like myself whom seeking
for knowledge in the IT industry, and also to all the staff members who guide students from
the beginning of the program.
Last, but not least, I express my heartfelt gratitude to my parents, sisters and my office
colleagues and friend who were with me during the project period by providing advice,
guidance and valuable support to make this effort success.

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Table of Contents

Declaration.............................................................................................................................................. i
Abstract.................................................................................................................................................. ii
Acknowledgement ................................................................................................................................ iii
List of Figures........................................................................................................................................ v
List of Tables ........................................................................................................................................ vi
List of Acronyms ................................................................................................................................. vii
1. Introduction ....................................................................................................................................... 1
1.1 Motivation ..................................................................................................................................... 1
1.2 Aims and Objectives of the Project............................................................................................... 2
1.3 Scope ............................................................................................................................................. 3
2. Background ....................................................................................................................................... 4
2.1 Requirement Analysis ................................................................................................................... 4
2.2 Review of similar systems ............................................................................................................ 7
2.3 Comparison of alternative tools and technologies ...................................................................... 10
3. Methodology .................................................................................................................................... 11
3.1 Description of Design ................................................................................................................. 11
3.2 Implementation Details ............................................................................................................... 14
3.2.1 Development Tools and Technologies ................................................................................. 14
3.2.2 System Implementation........................................................................................................ 19
3.2.3 Database Design................................................................................................................... 24
3.2.4 Mobile Client Interface ........................................................................................................ 26
3.2.5 Web Client Interface ............................................................................................................ 29
4. Evaluation ........................................................................................................................................ 33
4.1 User evaluation, Testing and Results .......................................................................................... 33
4.2 Critical analysis of work ............................................................................................................. 39
4.3 Conclusion .................................................................................................................................. 40
4.4 Future work ................................................................................................................................. 41
5. References ........................................................................................................................................ 42

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List of Figures

Figure 1 : Use Case Diagram ..................................................................................................... 6

Figure 2 : Parking Panda map .................................................................................................... 7
Figure 3 : Spot Hero map ........................................................................................................... 8
Figure 4 : Best Parking map....................................................................................................... 8
Figure 5 : ParkMobile map ........................................................................................................ 9
Figure 6 : System Architecture ................................................................................................ 11
Figure 7 : JSON Body .............................................................................................................. 15
Figure 8 : Spring Boot flow architecture ................................................................................. 17
Figure 9 : Code section for map ready functionality ............................................................... 19
Figure 10 : Code section to load all available parking slot and draw a marker ....................... 20
Figure 11 : Code section for added dependencies ................................................................... 20
Figure 12 : Code section to track all assigned locations for parking warden .......................... 21
Figure 13 : Code section to get the assigned locations ............................................................ 22
Figure 14 : Code section to update the availability/unavailability of parking slots................. 22
Figure 15 : Code section to POST locations and GET locations ............................................. 23
Figure 16 : Code section to update locations ........................................................................... 23
Figure 17 : Database table design for Location, Warden and Parking Details ........................ 24
Figure 18 : Location table details............................................................................................. 24
Figure 19 : Warden table details .............................................................................................. 25
Figure 20 : Parking table details .............................................................................................. 25
Figure 21 : Map load view with free parking slot .................................................................... 26
Figure 22 : Map load view with location details...................................................................... 27
Figure 23 : Google Map View with the direction .................................................................... 28
Figure 24 : Warden UI ............................................................................................................. 29
Figure 25 : Admin Login UI .................................................................................................... 29
Figure 26 : Parking Location UI .............................................................................................. 30
Figure 27 : Map Load View to select Longitude and Latitude ................................................ 30
Figure 28 : Logitude and Latitude of the selected location ..................................................... 31
Figure 29 : Parking Warden UI ................................................................................................ 32
Figure 30 : Parking warden UI to assign Locations to the selected warden ............................ 32
Figure 31 : Load map with all available parking slots nearby ................................................. 37
Figure 32 : Details on selected location .... Figure 33 : Directed to google maps
38

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List of Tables

Table 1 : Existing smart parking technologies ......................................................................... 10

Table 2 : HTTP Methods and Usage........................................................................................ 14
Table 3 : URIs used in the system ........................................................................................... 15

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List of Acronyms

API – Application Programming Interface

DB – Database
GPS – Global Positioning System
HTTP – HyperText Transfer Protocol
IDE – Integrated Development Environment
SDK – Software Development Kit
UI – User Interface

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1. Introduction

1.1 Motivation

Due to increase of individual personal vehicle usage and urbanization, the vehicle parking is
an important issue and its necessity is increasing day by day. Now a days mainly because of
people tending to use vehicle as individuals. Upon considering this serious issue in Sri Lanka,
this topic could be taken and giving a solution for this is the main motivation of this project
which is a good enough to find a free parking space in metropolitan areas like Colombo,
especially during rush hours. One of the best solutions available for this serious issue is
developing an automated parking system which reduces the traffic congestion and reduces the
time of finding a vacant parking slot where the application should give the information about
occupancy status of free parking slots [1].
Currently Sri Lankan drivers follow the common manual method to finding a free parking
space. Drivers find a space on the available area through luck. Traffic congestions will increase
on rush hours Due to limited number of paid parking areas on busy cities the drivers are
compelled to park the vehicle in open streets.
The Sri Lankan government has allowed drivers to park in open on-street parking areas near
Colombo city limits. So, this application mainly focuses on the open street parking locations.
The prime aim of this project is to develop an application which consists of a web application
for admin and a mobile based client for parking warden and for the driver. Admin is having the
functionality of managing parking locations and wardens along with assigning the locations for
parking wardens. Updating the slot availability or unavailability is the primary job of the
parking warden where the app allows the functionality to change the availability for all the
assigned parking slots. By getting the current geo location of the driver’s vehicle, the mobile
application provides with all the nearest available parking slots.

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1.2 Aims and Objectives of the Project

The aim of this project is to develop an automated parking system to address the mentioned
problems. This system will consist of admin module which allows to manage locations and
parking wardens. It also includes a mobile based client for drivers and parking wardens which
would be used to allow parking wardens to update availability and unavailability of parking
slots and allow drivers to search for and locate nearby available parking slots [2].
The project objectives for an automated parking system are as follows;

 Better parking experience due to the saving of fuel and time.

 Develop for street parking specially near cities of Colombo area.

 Reduce traffic congestion in busy cities and minimize driver’s time using an intelligent,
user friendly automated parking application.

 Help the drivers to find out the nearby and available parking slots.

 Giving detailed information of the availability of number of slots.

 Tracking the vehicle details so the drivers cannot cheat out for paying the parking fees.

 Making a set job for parking warden to manage the availability of parking slots and
track vehicle details.

 Add new locations, edit, delete and disable existing location details by the admin.

 Add new parking wardens, edit, delete and assign/ reassign locations for parking
wardens by the admin.

 Guide through google maps where guides driver to the available parking slot.

 Be Scalable, robust and reliable.

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1.3 Scope

This system is developed for an Android smart phone and supported by a back-end web service.
The scope of the system is defined as follows:

 Find out the benefits of developing an application for assisting drivers the need of a
free parking slot.

 Investigate different requirements and options to enhance the driver’s experience and
efficiency to find out a suitable free parking slot.

 Learn the development process on backend web services and smart phones using latest
technologies and various software development techniques.

 Develop a mobile application which helps driver to find out a vacant parking spot
quickly and easily by giving clear and simple directions.

 Develop the option to search available slots in nearby areas.

 Develop another mobile application view for parking warden to update the availability
and unavailability of parking slots and track vehicles via simple and comprehensive
interface.

 Develop a web-based application for admin user to manage locations and parking
wardens.

 Use location-based technology in the application.

 Evaluate and review the strengths and weaknesses of the project, seek and identify for
further improvements.

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2. Background

2.1 Requirement Analysis

Once started working on the requirements for the implementation of the project, the idea was
to develop a web service that can retrieve information of the availability status of the parking
slot and post that information to the mobile application and also send information to the
database through a web service URL and update those changes into the system [3].
Following are the technical requirements to develop an automated parking system.

Software Requirement

Operating system : Windows 10

IDE : IntelliJ IDEA

Web service : RESTful web services

Frameworks and APIs : Java Spring boot and JSON

Frontend : REACT, JavaScript

Database : MySQL

Browsers : Chrome, Firefox, IE

Hardware Requirement

Processor : Intel® Core™ i5-10210U CPU @ 1.60GHz 2.11GHz

RAM : 8 GB

Functional Requirements

The proposed system comprises of a web application for parking area admins, a mobile
application for parking wardens and a mobile application for users.
Each of their requirements are stated below.

 Mobile application for drivers

Login to the parking app

Search a parking area that need for an available parking spot

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 Find out all available parking slots
Navigate into google map directions once find out a suitable location

 Mobile application for parking wardens

Register into the application

Login after successful registration
Manage parking slots (Mark availability and unavailability of slots)
Check slot availability
Track vehicle details

 Web application for parking admin

Define new parking locations and specify number of parking lots

Modify data of existing parking areas
Remove existing parking areas
View the data of all registered parking areas

Non functional requirements

The non-functional requirements that should be considered throughout the application is as

follows [4].

 The server should be able to handle different concurrent user requests from different
users

 The application should be user friendly

 Application should be able to handle high traffic due to huge number of users may login
at the same time.

 The android application provides high accuracy and availability on finding the
locations.

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The following figure shows the system overview using a use case diagram

Figure 1 : Use Case Diagram

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2.2 Review of similar systems

Following displays the apps used in world wide which help to find a parking spot.

Parking Panda
Possibility of Finding a guaranteed parking spot is the main advantage of this service. When
the user searches for a parking space, as displayed in Figure 1, the results are displayed in a
map with list format on both the website and the mobile. Using this system drivers will be able
to reserve a parking space in a more convenient way. Until the driver find a specific location
user has to spend more time to navigate and compare between different options. Real time
prices and the distance shows the results of the application; the application doesn’t allow
sorting by price or by any other attribute. That is fixed [5].

Figure 2 : Parking Panda map

Spot Hero
Spot Hero is another informative parking reservation system with a similar concept, where
users can find a parking spot by address and get the results on a map. the left-hand side of the
parking panda application, they have a filter to prioritize the list of results. Although this feature
gives more focus to the user, it can only filter by price or by distance from the searched address.
Figure 2 shows Spot Hero’s map and list view [6] where the other options also can be viewed
that user might simply took to the map.

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 Figure 3 : Spot Hero map

Best Parking

Figure 4 : Best Parking map

Best Parking is an online-based parking search engine. By using the online web application or
the mobile application drivers can use the system which provides rates with hourly, daily,
weekly, and monthly. The application can search for parking by using current location,
specified address, cross street, or attraction site. Users have to select from the drop down lists
the city, location, parking type, and duration of the parking. The available parking locations
are appeared with priced pins in the map as shown in Figure 3. By clicking on a particular pin
point, it gives the information about the location where the calculations are accurate and satisfy

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the user’s need. In addition, the results are informative and do not reserve a parking spot.
Furthermore, clicking on drop down lists and choosing arrival and departure [7].

ParkMobile

The work procedures of this app are basically divided into three steps. First, look for the parking
signs or stickers at the place users want to park later. Second, once users are registered, use the
app to enter in the zone number listed on the parking signs found in previous step to start a
parking session. The final step includes reserving the selected parking spot and paying the
parking fees. After the reservation processes of parking have finished, and users will receive a
receipt as their parking confirmation. Also, one feature of this app is that users can open the
parking notification which will remind them 15 minutes before their parking session is set to
expire [8].

Figure 5 : ParkMobile map

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2.3 Comparison of alternative tools and technologies

Suitability
Smart parking
on open Strength Drawback
technology
parking lots
Due to varying
environmental
conditions, it is not
Active/Passive Provides parking suitable for open parking
Infrared sensor occupancy status lot.
Due to varying
environmental
conditions, it is not
Provides parking suitable for open parking
Ultrasonic sensor occupancy status lot.
Facilitates in getting the Not suitable for
Inductive loop count of vehicles in a individual parking
detectors parking lot occupancy status.
Guide driver to a
parking lot based on Do not solve congestion
Parking guidance count of available while cruising for
systems parking spaces parking space
Due to varying
environmental
conditions, it is not
Radio frequency Facilitates in authorizing suitable for open parking
tags vehicles in a parking lot. lot.
Does not provide
Provides navigational parking occupancy
directions to the parking status and is subjective
GPS space to errors
Provides parking
occupancy status or
facilitates in authorizing Challenges with low
Machine vision vehicles lightning conditions
Provides parking Challenges will be based
Multi-agent systems occupancy status on the technology used
Is used only as a
Facilitates efficient supporting tool in
parking occupancy parking occupancy
Neural Networks detection detection
Based on historical data
gives the parking Do not provide real time
Fuzzy logic availability status parking occupancy

Table 1 : Existing smart parking technologies

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3. Methodology

3.1 Description of Design

This application provides by integrating user-friendly features in it that can help to

navigate through the crowded parking places and find a parking space easily. This
application is developed using 3 components as,

 Driver Panel
 Parking Warden Panel
 Admin Panel

Data Management Application

Storage
Web Service
Communication
REST

Admin

Parking End User

Warden

Figure 6 : System Architecture

Basically, the parking system is designed in a manner, which is applicable to cover open
parking areas, and street side parking. Going through the technical side, this automated parking
system consists of the main components like Cloud system along with Database and Web
Service, the Navigation system and User Device. The above image will show the cloud-based
system architecture for the parking system.

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System architecture shows the components in the parking system, including parking warden,
driver, admin, cloud server along with a web service, front end application and a database. The
parking warden has the ability to mark availability/ unavailability of parking slots. The main
application sever database keeps the data of all parking locations which are assigned to a
parking warden. The driver first has to register for the app using internet. The application server
keeps track of GPS location where the vehicle exist and display the nearest parking slots
according to the current location. All parking slots in an area and their location on GPS are
kept in the main database server.
In this system, REST communication is available to call through web services and mobile
device. Spring Boot use to build RESTful web services and DB side is develop using MySQL.
Functionality and data are considered resources and are accessed using Uniform Resource
Identifiers (URIs), specially links on the web in the REST architectural style. RESTful web
services are developed to work on the Web at best version. This architectural style contains a
client/server architecture and is designed to use a stateless communication protocol, typically
HTTP. By using a standardized protocol and interface, clients and servers exchange resource
representations in the REST architecture style. Using a set of structured well-defined and
simple operations, the resources of REST are acted. Constraints such as performance,
scalability, and modifiability specify Representational State Transfer (REST) in an
architectural style.

 Driver Panel

The driver panel of your parking mobile app will help users to view for a free parking
location nearby with just a click on the mobile application.
Track Location- With the in-built GPS navigation functionality in the app,
application can track the current location of the driver’s vehicle.
View available slots with the details- The search feature in a parking app lets its
users find available parking in a particular location, city or a particular parking area
and select the same as per their convenience.

 Parking Warden Panel

The parking warden panel allows to allocate a particular parking lot once a vehicle
comes in. and removes it once the vehicle goes out.
Manage Parking Slots- Through this feature a parking warden can update the
availability or unavailability of a particular slot in the location once a vehicle comes
in and goes out from the slot.
Check available Slots- The parking warden can check how many free slots in their
parking area. This way they can decide on accepting or declining a parking request .

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  Admin

Add/Remove/Edit/Disable Parking Slots- Through this feature admin can add new
parking slots and remove/disable existing parking slots.

Add/Remove/Edit/Assign wardens to the Parking Locations- Through this

feature admin can add new locations, edit existing parking locations, delete the
locations and assign the parking locations to a selected warden.

Backend Management System

 Authenticate users and admins before modifying any sensitive data.

 Allow modification of parking lot status by operators.

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3.2 Implementation Details

This section describes about the developing tools and techniques used in implementing this
system and the details of the implementation part of this system. The implementation can be
categorized into three main sections as the implementation of the mobile application phase,
web service phase and web application phase. Following section demonstrates the
implementation details of each section of this system with their processes after discussing the
tools and techniques adapted.

3.2.1 Development Tools and Technologies

 Restful Web Service

Representational State Transfer (REST) is a style of software architecture for

distributed hypermedia system which is using the web standards and HTTP protocol,
and it is one of the current popular web service implementations. Its basic idea is to
treat everything as resource identified by universal resource identifiers (URIs) and
supported by HTTP common operations. POST, GET, PUT and DELETE are the
mainly used HTTP methods. HTTP and the main principles concepts of REST are
developed using RESTful web services [9].

Table 2 : HTTP Methods and Usage

The system has implemented to use RESTful style to represent a resource. The
following table illustrate some example URI used in the system.
URI Description
localhost:8080/locations Add new parking locations
localhost:8080/wardens Add new parking wardens
localhost:8080/locations/1 Request on locations where the location id=1
pass as a path variable
localhost:8080/wardens Request to list all the parking wardens
localhost:8080/assign?warden-id=2 Assign locations to parking warden where
warden-id is passed as request parameter

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 localhost:8080/wardens/5 Update parking warden whose id=5 pass as a
path variable
localhost:8080/locations/1 Delete location which id=1 pass as a path
variable
localhost:8080/wardens Delete all parking wardens

Table 3 : URIs used in the system

The current system design has exposed JSON interface for the mobile client to retrieve
data for available parking spots and update available parking locations via Restful
interface from the main application server.
JSON is a lightweight data-interchange format. It is natively support by JavaScript
engine as well as many mobile clients, it is commonly used in web service, thus, easier
to process. Through RESTful interface, main application server and mobile client
communication can be happened. For manipulation in the mobile based client for driver
and parking warden, data received by the mobile client will further processed and stored
in the data store in memory [10].

Figure 7 : JSON Body

Below have mentioned some API End Points used in the system.

 Add wardens

@POST localhost:8080/wardens
@
@Body
{
"name": "Amal Perera",
"nic": "457661504V",
"mobile":"0115734743",
"address": "No 43, Flower Road, Col 7",
"email": "[email protected]"
}

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 Get a particular warden whose id passed as a path variable

@GET localhost:8080/wardens/4
@path-param 4

 Request to list all parking wardens

@GET localhost:8080/wardens

 Add locations
@POST localhost:8080/locations
@Body
{
"lon":4676.34,
"lat":1323.378,
"lname":"Majestic City",
"city":"Colombo 4",
"slots": 10
}

 Update parking warden data whose id=5 passed as path variable

@PUT localhost:8080/wardens/5
@path-param 5
@Body
{
"slots": [],
"name": "sumanapala",
"nic": "762423050v",
"mobile": "0879372908",
"address": "moratuwa",
"email": "[email protected]"
}

 Assign location to a particular warden passed as request parameter

@PUT localhost:8080/assign?warden-id=2
@param warden-id=2
@Body
{
"id":1,
"lname":"Majestic City"
}

 Delete all wardens

@DELETE localhost:8080/wardens

 Delete a particular warden whose id = 6 passed as path variable

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 @DELETE localhost:8080/wardens/6
@path-param 6

 Spring Framework

Open source application framework for the java platform can be considered as the
Spring Framework. The framework avails a complete programing and configuration
model for present-day java-based enterprise applications and supports RESTful web
services development. Web applications can build on top of Java EE platform with
some extensions where spring framework not only supports the development of Java
applications. All the tiers including one tier- stand-alone java application, web tier- in
web application and enterprise tier- in Enterprise Java Beans. The above-mentioned
tiers are a single place for Java based application on all layers [11].

Figure 8 : Spring Boot flow architecture

 Android Studio

Android studio allows to download in the operating systems like Windows, macOS and
Linux which allows to do developments on JetBrains' IntelliJ IDEA software. For
operating system of google’s android integration of development environment can be
used. Using the new constraint layouts along with a conversion of PNG, BMP, GIF,
JPEG to WEbP format used the current android studio version v2.3.0 for this project.
As the primary IDE for native Android application development and for Eclipse
Android Development Tools, the replacement can happen. To give a better

17
 compression, WebP file format is used which provides transparency (like PNG) and a
glossy compression (like JPEG) [12]

 Android SDK

Comprehensive set of development tools include the Android software development kit
(SDK) includes a. Sample code, tutorials, libraries, debuggers and handset emulators
are included on this. SDK version v29 is used for this project implementation. Currently
Windows, Mac OS, Linux are the supported development platforms for Android SDK
[13].

 Third party libraries and APIs

The Google Maps Android API supports to add Google Maps data to the application.
The map features give functionalities like access to Google Maps servers, data
downloading, map display, and response to map gestures. Allowing the direct
interaction on user with the map when load the application and display the information
for free slots of locations are the additional features [14]. Adding markers, polygons,
overlays in the map can be done using API calls, and to set up the user's current view
in a particular map area. Adding following features into the map will be allowed by the
third-party libraries and APIs:

Bitmap graphics anchored to specific positions on the map.

Sets of line segments.
Enclosed segments.
Icons anchored to specific positions on the map.
Sets of images which are displayed on top of the base map tiles.

The parking slots displayed according to the current location of driver’s vehicle, have
used third party APIs and libraries for this [15].

The system can be divided into the sections as a database server, a main server application
(web service), administrative front end as well as a mobile based front end. The web service is
implemented by using Java Spring Boot. It handles all the business logic and process user’s
request and communication with the web management front end, mobile client via HTTP
interface. It will extract and validate user’s submitted request according to the validation rules
against the actual data stored in the database, received requests which failure to validate will
be rejected by the system while valid input will be stored and further processed by the server.
For data communication between client and server, standard HTTP request, JSON, will be used
and Restful Web service is implemented to enable easy communication [16].
The MySQL database will store all the data processed by the system and all data will accessed
and manipulated by the back-end system deployed at the application server directly.
The management front-end will be used by the admin user. It is implemented using React along
with HTML, JavaScript and Bootstrap. The major purpose is to interpret user’s input and
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submit request to the application server for further processing. It also includes basic validation
of user input, so that all operational logic can remain at the server and prevent security issues,
this also make the system more maintainable.
The mobile based client will be used by the driver and the parking warden. As a front-end
client, it also interprets user’s input and submits requests to the application server for further
processing. It allows driver to view the map with available parking slots, search parking
locations and update available parking slots by the warden. As integrated with google map, the
mobile client will also communicate with google map server to retrieve geo location
information as well as address querying information.

3.2.2 System Implementation

Some important code sections of the system are included below.

The callback is given to the map object once after the map is ready. The map is stored for later
usage. Basically map related UI settings, like location-enable facility, compass-enable facility,
zoom controllers and enable mylocations button are added. Finally the marker drawing function
is called.

Figure 9 : Code section for map ready functionality

Code snippet to load all the available parking slots on the map near the current location where
the driver exist.

19
 Figure 10 : Code section to load all available parking slot and draw a marker

All the dependencies that used to build the application.

Figure 11 : Code section for added dependencies

20
The assigned locations for the parking warden can be tracked using the following code
snippet.

Figure 12 : Code section to track all assigned locations for parking warden

The web service is implemented using java spring boot which mainly consist of
AdminController.java, WardenController.java and DriverController.java.
The following code snippets displays Admin and Warden functionality methods.

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 Figure 13 : Code section to get the assigned locations

This function checks for own locations assigned by admin and return data to the front-end. All
REST functions as well as this function enable cross-origin to grant access from outside.

Figure 14 : Code section to update the availability/unavailability of parking slots

The function responsible to update the availability of free slots in a particular place.
Additionally it has the ability to handle the free slots not to exceed the maximum number of
slots and not to decrease that less than zero in the place.

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 Figure 15 : Code section to POST locations and GET locations

Add function insert location data to database table and the get function can be used to retrieve
all locations data to outside.
The following function has been implemented to update selected location details and it has
bound to locate the edit feature in admin-ui.

Figure 16 : Code section to update locations

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3.2.3 Database Design

Figure 17 is the ERD for the parking system. Fields in Location table has mapped with location
class in the web service. Each location has primary key that mapped to location id and the
foreign key is wid mapped to warden table primary key. Parking detail table is an extended
table for gather vehicle details that will be used to identify correct parking locations areas’
requirements.

Figure 17 : Database table design for Location, Warden and Parking Details

Table views on DBeaver are displayed on following figures.

Figure 18 : Location table details

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Figure 19 : Warden table details

Figure 20 : Parking table details

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3.2.4 Mobile Client Interface

The system provides a mobile client for parking warden and driver. It includes functions of
view available parking slots, search parking locations and update parking slot availability. The
mobile client is another front-end interface of the main application, it will process user input,
issues requests to main server and render the results returned by the server with minimum
business logic processing.

Figure 21 : Map load view with free parking slot

To provide an easy to use and user-friendly parking slot finding experience, the app has
integrated those functionalities with google map.
Once open the mobile application, the map will open up with the current location and also
request to the application server to perform loading the location area which have free parking
slots, which is within the current location area. Once server returns the matching results, the
mobile client will display the free parking spot locations. Once the user clicks on a particular

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location it will show the location details by giving the location name and the number of slots
available in that particular location as displayed on Figure 22.

Figure 22 : Map load view with location details

Then at the bottom of the app which shown in Figure 22, the option will give the user to redirect
to the google map to find the direction to the location. When clicking on that, google map will
load as shown in Figure 23.

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 Figure 23 : Google Map View with the direction

Once a particular vehicle reserves a slot on the location, parking warden will log into the mobile
client app which will gives the separate user view and will update the available slots on that
location. And at the same time when a particular vehicle leaves the location, similarly warden
can update the available slots. Figure 24 shows the parking warden panel where at the top,
warden can swipe through the assigned locations. From the bottom controller changing slots
for the selected location can be done. The app functionality gives the warden to add up the slots
to the maximum point and reduce the slots up to 0.

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 Figure 24 : Warden UI

3.2.5 Web Client Interface

Through the web management front-end, the following figure shows all the parking location
and parking warden setting functionalities. First admin should login to the system using the
screen shown in Figure 25.

Figure 25 : Admin Login UI

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Using the below interface locations can be setup. A new location can be saved into the system
by giving the Name, City, No of Slots, Longitude and Latitude. Longitude and Latitude can be
entered by selecting location on the map which is displayed when clicking on the location add
button on the interface as shown Figure 26.

Figure 26 : Parking Location UI

Figure 27 : Map Load View to select Longitude and Latitude

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Once select the exact location from the map, the relevant Longitude and Latitude is auto
selected into the field as shown in Figure 28.

Figure 28 : Logitude and Latitude of the selected location

The functionalities exist to View, Edit and Delete an existing parking location. The added
parking locations can be view on the grid on left side. When a particular location is not assigned
to a parking warden it is by default it displayed using color code White. Once assign a particular
warden to the location, it displayed the color code as Red.
The admin is able to add parking wardens into the system by giving valid data for Name, NIC,
Mobile, Address and Email. The added parking wardens are displayed on the grid at left hand
side of the UI. View, Edit and Delete functionalities also exist for existing parking wardens in
the system. Apart from that admin can assign parking wardens to a location using the same
interface displayed on Figure 29. By default, the added parking wardens are displaying using
the color code White. When assigning a location to a warden, first admin has to select the
parking warden and clicking on Add Location icon, the location which are not assigned a
warden are list down on the grid below the parking warden grid list as shown in Figure 30.
In the system a particular warden can be assigned to many locations. Once assign a particular
location to a parking warden, system gives the color code as Green if the warden has been
assigned to only one location. If there are 2 locations assigned, gives the color code as Orange
and if there are more than 3, gives the color code as Red. Figure 29 displayed all three color
codes.
And also, there is a search implemented on the grid. Admin can search parking wardens
according to the Name, NIC and Mobile of the warden.
Figure 29 shows the parking warden setting interface.

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 Figure 29 : Parking Warden UI

Following Figure 30 shows the interface when admin select a warden to assign a particular
location/s. The grid below the warden show the available parking locations which are not
assigned to a particular warden

Figure 30 : Parking warden UI to assign Locations to the selected warden

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4. Evaluation

4.1 User evaluation, Testing and Results

To evaluate how the system, fulfill the objectives, there can be different types of evaluation
methods need to be considered. A user-based evaluation is considered in evaluating the system.

What is evaluated?
How accurate the parking app facilitates the user to find a free parking slot?
How it gives the search results for the given parking location area?

What is the purpose of the evaluation?

Ultimately achieve the project goals and the objectives is the purpose of the evaluation. People
who are searching for a free parking space in busy cities is becoming a major problem in rush
hours. Therefore, it should be needed that the goals are evaluated and achieved properly or not.

Who is interested in the evaluation?

People who interested in using the developed application are the relevant parties who would
like for the evaluation. It can be considered that the project can be extended to deliver, If the
project is successfully achieving the objectives and the goal.

How will they use the findings?

People who find free parking slots can use the findings of the evaluation result in finding the
parking location. How a particular parking user finds a parking area with free slots.

What questions should be answered?

 Find free parking spaces from the user‘s current location in terms of distance and travel
time
 Guide vehicles to the selected parking space through the shortest possible path by
navigating the application for google maps.
 Save time of finding free parking slots
 What kinds of enhancements can be applied to improve the efficiency and other non-
functional factors of the developed application.

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Software testing is a critical component of software quality assurance that represents the
ultimate analysis of specification, design, and code generation of software product. The testing
method is basically combined with Verification and Validation. Validation refers to testing
whether the system satisfies the requirements while verification refers to whether the system
implements the specified functions properly. Basic goals of test evaluation are determining
whether the promises about the invention by the supplier and the requirements of the customer
are met on an acceptable level [17].
Testing begins with the implementation; code is reviewed while developing stage for testing.
Test plan included all phases of testing and also used as a guide for the overall testing process.
Before the system implementation, the test plan was designed. A test plan includes: test
objectives, schedule and logistics, test strategies and especially test cases.
Test cases were created according to the designed test plan. That contains data, procedure, and
expected result and represents which use to system or part of the system run. To reduce
complexity of the testing process test cases were designed for each module independently. The
following tables specify some test cases.
Manual testing method and procedures used for testing rather than automation tools and
technologies.
Test cases for web client functions.

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35
Test Cases for Mobile Client

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This section presents the final outcome results of the application where according to the slot
allocation of the parking availability by the warden, how driver can view the available parking
slots in the map. In Figure 31 shows available parking locations in the area where the user’s
current location shows a blue color dot in the map.

Figure 31 : Load map with all available parking slots nearby

Driver can view how many slots are available in a particular location by selecting the location.
Application shows the location name and the number of slots available in that selected location.
At that time if the parking warden updated the slot availability, the data should be synced on
the driver app accordingly. Using the number of parking slots available, the user can get an
idea about the probability of getting loss of a available parking slot in that location.

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The Figure 32 the details of the selected parking location by driver.

Figure 32 : Details on selected location Figure 33 : Directed to google maps

Once user click the direction, application redirects to the google maps and driver can get the
fastest route from the map along with the distance and the time to get into that location.

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4.2 Critical analysis of work

When analyze the work carrying out during this project there were some challenges identified.

Some of the challenges faced during the system development phases are listed below:

 Design

Different technologies were used to meet the requirements of the project since there is
no one technology that addressed all the needs of the system. Discussions made with
the supervisor when narrow down the earlier project requirements.

 Implementation

The implementation of the parking application requires huge knowledge of back end
development languages like java spring boot, Android and database development side
of MySQL, front end development languages like REACT, JavaScript. And send API
calls through JSON requests.
The time to get familiar into these programming languages is usually high since the
time taken to learn the real time communication between those languages is quite deep.

 Deployments/Installation

When setting up the development environment which matches the above mentioned
programming languages changing PostgreSQL to MySQL was suitable.

 Testing and Evaluation

Bug fixes and verifying them on the development environment sequentially.

Getting feedback from the end users about the application when searching for a free
parking slots during rush hours.

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4.3 Conclusion

The developed automated parking application is a solution to reduce driver’s frustration by

providing accurate information about the available free parking slots in current area. In Sri
Lanka there are lot of private parking areas where the management of those parking areas are
doing manually.
The primary objectives through interviews identified that there are main problems associated
with parking areas specially in Colombo area,
 Finding free parking slots in open parking streets takes a lot of time
 Cost of parking fees in private parking areas are high, due to that people tend to move
to open street parking in Colombo city limits
 Traffic congestion is high during rush hours

The system reduces the work of manual parking effort and reduces the searching time taken by
drivers to find free parking slots. This will automatically reduce environmental pollution,
traffic congestion and fuel consumption. Then the efficiency of transportation will increase.
Understanding the requirements and finding the best technologies to implement was a
challenging task. The system consists of three main components for Admin user, Driver and
Parking Warden.
Admin user can manage parking locations and wardens through a web application. At the same
time android based mobile applications are developed separately for parking warden and for
the driver. Parking warden can update slot availability according to that the available slot data
are synced to the driver app accordingly. By clicking on a particular location in the map, the
driver can view the location details along with the available number of slots. Selecting the
required location in the map driver can get the directions by navigating to the google maps.
A successful implementation of this project would result in less traffic in crowded parking
spaces specially like open street parking areas in Colombo city limits. It provides drivers, as it
would reduce the wasting time, long queues, tension, stress and increase the efficiency of the
parking system. And also using this parking application can track out who has paid for the
parking meter which are maintained by the government that would be easy for the work carried
out by the parking warden.

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4.4 Future work

There is a possibility to do more improvements even though the project objectives were
achieved. This automated parking system can be further upgraded by including features like,

 From the driver’s point of view, allow an option to reserve a parking slot before reach
into the location.

 Making a payment for the reservation will reduce the unnecessary bookings.

 Make payments charge hourly.

 Tracking vehicle details will allow to find out what are the vehicles that reached in/ out
to the location

 Scanning the vehicle which are coming in/out from the location and automatically
update the slot availability which reduce the manual work done by the parking warden
who is allocated for a particular location.

 Automate the slot allocation by getting GPS location.

 Analyze data and make some predictions using history data through which user can get
suggestions and recommendations on parking spaces and the availability trends and
make available more parking slots on popular parking areas.

 Send alerts when adding new parking locations into the system.

 Make notify and send SMSs to the user once payments are done for parking
reservations.

 Notify driver about the occupancy status of the parking spaces.

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5. References

[1] K. D. P. P. D. Abhishek Mitra, "Android Based Smart Parking Reservation,"

International Journal of Innovative Research in Computer, 2016.

[2] R. A. N. G. A. B. Supriya Gatalwar, "ParkSmart: Android Application for Parking

System," IJCSN International Journal of Computer Science and Network, 2016.

[3] S. D. Renuka R., "ANDROID BASED SMART PARKING SYSTEM USING SLOT,"
ARPN Journal of Engineering and Applied Sciences , vol. 10, no. 7, 2015.

[4] J. Liang, "“ParkinVT”, A Concept Mobile Application," Thesis submitted to the faculty
of the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in partial fulfillment of the
requirements for the degree of Master of Fine Arts in Creative Technologies, 2017.

[5] L. K. Mark Lawrence, "Parking Panda," a SpotHero Company, 2011. [Online].

Available: https://www.parkingpanda.com/.

[6] L. K. Mark Lawrence, "SPOT HERO," 2011. [Online]. Available: https://spothero.com/.

[7] A. D. D. R. J. J. Yona Shtern, "Best Parking powered by PARKWHIZ," ParkWhiz

company, 2007. [Online]. Available: https://www.bestparking.com/.

[8] M. d. Vries, "ParkMobile," Parkmobile Group, 2000. [Online]. Available:

https://parkmobile.io/.

[9] R. T. Fielding, "Representational State Transfer (REST)," Architectural Styles and the
Design of Network-based Software Architectures, 2000.

[10] J. Freeman, "What is JSON? A better format for data exchange," 2019. [Online].
Available: https://www.infoworld.com/article/3222851/what-is-json-a-better-format-
for-data-exchange.html.

[11] K. C. N. O. Dashrath Mane, "The Spring Framework: An Open Source Java Platform for
Developing Robust Java Applications," International Journal of Innovative Technology
and Exploring Engineering (IJITEE), vol. 3, no. 2, 2013.

[12] V. S. Kharchenko, "Mobile and hybrid Internet of Things based computing,"

ERASMUS+ ALIOT “Modernization Internet of Things: Emerging Curriculum for
Industry and Human Applications Domains” (573818-EPP-1-2016-1-UK-EPPKA2-
CBHE-JP), 2019.

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[13] "Getting Started with the NDK," 2006. [Online]. Available:
https://developer.android.com/ndk/guides.

[14] "Maps SDK for Android," 2018. [Online]. Available:

https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/android-sdk/intro.

[15] M. C. A. M. O. A. Y. Tejal Lotlikar, "Smart Parking Application," International Journal

of Computer Applications , vol. 149, no. 9, 2016.

[16] S. C. YADAVALLI, "SMART PARKING SYSTEM," B-Tech, Jawaharlal Nehru

Technological University, India, 2014, 2016.

[17] C. W. Sewagudde, "The design and implementation of a smart-parking system," Degree

Programme in Computer Science and Engineering, 2016.

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