The future of parking is smart and frictionless! In his interview, Yury Birchenko, CTO and Founder of Nwave shares the story of bringing true digital transformation to parking and urban mobility. The unmatched, in many criteria, sensor technology stands as a leader of vehicle detection, bringing easy and stress-free experience for both drivers and parking operators.
To learn more, watch the video or read the full interview.
Interview with Yury Birchenko, CTO & Founder of Nwave
Q1: Why did you start Nwave?
Nwave started back in 2015 to help bring physical sensor data to the Cloud and deliver on the promise of the Internet of Things by creating valuable insights based on this data.
Q2: How exactly Nwave is doing that?
We were one of the first to realize that wireless technologies designed for humans don’t work for sensors. We charge our smartphones every day but connected devices need to be either wired or work off a battery for many years! So we created revolutionary technology with 10x better communication range and 10x better cell capacity. Our technology allows tens of thousands devices to communicate over 10 miles distance with a battery life of up 10 years. This is a technology with a broad range of applications, and can be applied to anything from Smart Cities to Smart Agriculture.
But three years ago we made a pivotal decision to focus on a single industry that could benefit most from our LPWAN technology – Smart Parking.
Q3: Why Parking? Never thought parking could be that exciting…
City parking is a huge problem and still not solved. The cost of inefficient parking is staggering! The recent study showed that the average UK or US driver spends more than 40 hours per year looking for a free parking spot. It’s 5 working days! Not to say about trillions of gallons of fuel waste and air pollution!
Mobile technology has changed many aspects of our life. We rarely search for a taxi on a street these days. Why finding free parking space should still be a manual and stressful experience?
We want to change that!
Plus the advent of connected and autonomous vehicle makes parking, even more, data-driven. So it’s a really exciting space to be in right now!
Q4: How does your product solve the parking problem?
Our technology completely solves the parking problem! We developed the world’s thinnest vehicle detection sensor with the longest communication range as well as the longest battery lifespan. Alternative sensor products are power-hungry and tend to have big batteries. Not to mention that they also require time-consuming and intrusive road drilling, just to be installed into the asphalt. Our sensor is so thin that it can be simply glued to the road and sit there for 10 years delivering real-time parking availability data.
Nwave is also the first on the market to bring driver identification on the sensor. Drivers can check-in on parking spot with a smartphone or key fob tag. Think of it as London’s Oyster card for parking!
Q5: How does the adoption of this exciting technology go?
We are working with one of the most forward-looking cities both in the UK and US. Just last week we received the largest order of 5,000 sensors that should be installed in 5 locations across the UK by October this year. This should be Europe’s biggest Smart Parking sensor deployment up to date. So for us, the future of smart parking is really exciting and we are very busy working on the delivery now!
Q6: What are your plans for the near future?
The future looks really interesting and bright. Making a product at the intersection of two big unfolding tech trends – Mobile and Autonomous Driving is very exciting. Our sensors generate tons of data and we are now working on AI-driven predictive analytics to deliver even better parking experience for the drivers… whoever they will be!