Locate cars faster with wayfinding technology

The essence

As a large importer and distributor of cars, D’Ieteren was looking for a more efficient solution for parking & locating cars at their parking lot. We created a wayfinding solution for the RealWear Navigator 500, a smartglasses device that performs under all weather conditions, and has an integrated GPS chip. Thanks to our solution, D’Ieteren can now locate the assigned parking spot much faster and locate it in the most efficient way thanks to the virtual guidance system.

The challenge

Locate cars and provide guidance to them

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 smartglasses to guide the drivers with wayfinding technology. This technology can confirm the position of a car, and then guide the driver to it.

With wayfinding technology “chaos planning” could also be enabled. This means that all brands and types of cars could be parked randomly. Drivers 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

We built a smartglasses application that locates a parked car, and guides drivers to the exact location by means of virtual arrows and a map visualizing the route. To do so, we created a navigation system that works based on a digital twin of the parking lot, in combination with GPS technology. This combination is what makes the application work very accurately.

The application was built for the RealWear Navigator 500. We selected this smartglasses device because of its resistance to all weather conditions and has an integrated GPS chip. It’s waterproof and can handle extreme temperatures. Secondly, drivers can easily tilt the display on the device when driving to see the surroundings and focus on the road.

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 work 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. Next to 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 to develop the core of the solution as a smartphone application. This gave us the opportunity to already develop and test the solution, while D’Ieteren got some more time to perform user tests with the different smartglasses devices that we provided. When they gave the RealWear Navigator 500 a go, we pivoted the application to a smartglasses application. Because we develop our solutions platform agnostic, this was no problem at all.

The future

Integrated into their ecosystem

The application was thoroughly tested throughout the organization and the results were extremely positive. D’Ieteren will now upgrade their internal systems to a new Yard Management System. When all is set-up, we will integrate our application into their new ecosystem.