Bhopal airport is reportedly prepared to implement India’s first automated traffic management system and has already began its pilot project. The manual time tokens handed over to the passengers by the staff will be replaced by the AI, which automatically scans the number plate and sends an SMS to the driver with the time log. This will be a time and energy saver as, in most scenarios, people must wait long to park their vehicles.

Ramji Aswathi, the Raja Bhoj Airport Director, said that this AI-powered system will remove the bottlenecks caused in driveways. “Motorists who went to the airport on Friday would have experienced the new system as text messages pinged on their mobile phones on entry and exit times”, the director said. He also stated that once the system becomes fully operational, the airport authorities will impose a fine of 500 rupees for a prolonged stay on the driveway after six minutes.

How does the system work?

Every vehicle entering the airport will be detected and scanned by an AI camera that captures explicitly the rear number plate of vehicles. The AI system will identify the vehicle based on the colour, type, model, entry time and other parameters. It then classifies the vehicle under a list of blacklisted, special, VIP and whitelisted vehicles. When a vehicle gets blacklisted, an immediate alert will be generated. The director said they would store all the data in a cloud database.

When the vehicle leaves the airport, the AI camera will quickly detect the details, and the software will search its database to identify if it has been within the allotted time. If the vehicle does not leave within the given time, an alert will be generated at the dashboard, resulting in further penalisation and ending up on the blacklist. The director mentioned this would be an adequate solution for the never-ending arguments between visitors and parking contractors.

The director said it is a one-of-a-kind parking solution as the automatic intelligent parking management system uses AI to manage and monitor everything without demanding human intervention, which makes the solution economically feasible and technically advanced.