Locating cars faster with Digital Twin and AR

The essence

As a large importer and distributor of cars, D’Ieteren was looking for a solution to improve operations on their (massive) parking lot, e.g. storing & locating cars. We created a Digital Twin of the complete parking lot including its ‘physical’ context like roads and parking spots, as well as its operational flows. Combined with a RealWear Navigator 500- an industry smartglasses device that performs under all weather conditions and has an integrated GPS chip- this ‘virtual clone’ allowed us to deliver a precise wayfinding solution. D’Ieteren can now locate (and navigate to) specific cars much faster; and a lot more reliable. Based on these new possibilities for working with their parking lot, the goal is to move to a logistical principle called “chaos planning”; supercharging movements on the parking even further.

The challenge

Locate cars faster

D’Ieteren is a Belgian importer and distributor of car brands such as Volkswagen, Audi, Porsche, Bentley and Lamborghini. Everyday thousands of cars are parked at, and again moved from, a specific designated spot on their parking lot with room for 10.000 vehicles. Their site is divided into different zones, with the last zone being a 10-minute drive from the entrance. Parking and relocating a load of cars can obviously be very time-consuming.

D’Ieteren was looking for a more efficient solution to bring a car to their assigned spot and picking them back up when needed. When we heard about this challenge, we immediately thought of the potential of Digital Twins in combination with AR smartglasses to guide the operators with wayfinding technology. This technology can confirm the position of a car, and then guide the operator to it.

With wayfinding technology, “chaos planning” could also be enabled. This means that all brands and types of cars could be parked randomly. Operators wouldn’t have to drive to the last zone when there is a parking spot available in the first zone, just because that specific car brand “belongs” in the last zone.

The Solution

First we created a Digital Twin of their parking lot including its ‘physical’ context like roads, sections and parking spots, as well as the operational flows (or rules) applied across its area. By adding a wayfinding algorithm on top, the system can easily define the fastest route to a specific car, e.g. parking spot. We selected the RealWear Navigator 500 as the most suitable smartglasses to be used as hands-free interface for this Digital Twin, as it performs well under any weather condition. Next to that, it has an integrated GPS chip. By using the GPS position of the glasses, we can perfectly align the spacial context living inside our twin with the actual (real-world) parking and guide the operator accordingly. The Realwear guides operators to the exact location by means of virtual arrows and a map visualizing the route.

Our approach

From smartphone to smartglasses

To start the project, it was important for us to truly understand the way logistic workers of D’Ieteren operate today. Therefore, we planned a day where we followed along with the drivers on the parking lot.

Next, we did a thorough research of different smartglasses devices. Besides the RealWear Navigator 500, we also tested the Vuzix M400 and M4000. But, in terms of accuracy, the GPS of the Vuzix devices didn’t meet the standards.

We started developing the core of the solution, the Digital Twin and a smartphone application for the wayfinding part. This gave us the opportunity to already test and iterate on the solution, while D’Ieteren got some more time to perform user tests with the different smartglasses devices that we provided. When the decision on the Realwear 500 was made, we pivoted into a smartglasses application. Because we develop our solutions platform agnostic, this was no problem at all.