Talking at TrafficInfraTech Expo, Santosh Kumar, Business Head – Park Zeus, Bosch Mobility Platform & Solutions, said that moving forward, the country truly needs smarter systems.
With parking a constant challenge in India, are we adopting the right approach for smooth traffic, both for daily use and at major events?
For us, the real challenge in India is not the lack of ideas. This country has so many innovators. The real task is bringing all these solutions together so they can work with each other. We need standard operating procedures, protocols where the exchange of data happens. There may be many different ways to solve a problem, but in the end, everything comes down to one thing, getting the data layer in one place.
To take care of the layer, we need strong architectural and platform thinking; meaning we build a foundation where many different solutions can connect and work together.
Some of the key elements in Bosch’s smart parking solutions
When we started working on parking, our idea was simple: build one common tech platform where every type of parking solution can plug in and work together. Parking is not one thing; it has many parts.
You have access control at the entry and exit, which can be handled by RFID, cameras or loop detectors. Traditionally, companies sold these as separate products. Then you have systems that show whether a parking lot is full or empty, or guide drivers to the available slots. That is another module. After that comes license plate recognition, which again can be done through different technologies.
What we did was break all these parts into small modular building blocks, like Lego. Each block – access, guidance, slot detection, number plate recognition can come from any technology provider. And instead of forcing everything to be built by Bosch, we created an operating system where all these modules can plug in easily. Think of it as plug and play parking.
This tech stack also sits inside a larger mobility stack. The idea is that every component can work as an independent unit but still connect smoothly to the rest of the system. That way, if someone already has a strong solution, we do not need to recreate it. We simply integrate it.
We have already deployed this in many places. In tech parks, we have integrated access control, visitor management and empty slot detection into one system. At ports and large industrial sites, we have added violation detection, tracking things like over speeding or overstaying inside the facility.
Individually, these are all separate solutions. But customers do not want to manage ten different vendors. They want one integrated system where all the data flows to a single place. That is what we have built, whether it is for parking, parking plus logistics, or applications like tolling or traffic management.
