Automated vehicle parking management system

An automated vehicle parking management method, including:

• acquiring a series of images over time of at least one parking bay having a designated parking rule using at least one image acquisition means;
• detecting presence of a vehicle parked in said at least one parking bay using at least one sensor;
• deriving arrival and departure triggers for the vehicle parked in the at least one parking bay from information from the at least one sensor indicative of the presence of said vehicle parked in said at least one parking bay;
• acquiring a buffer of said images of the at least one parking bay upon receipt of said arrival trigger and/or said departure trigger for the vehicle parked in the at least one parking bay, whereby the buffer extends for an allocated series of said images acquired immediately before the arrival trigger and/or the departure trigger to a further allocated series of said images acquired immediately after the arrival trigger and/or the departure trigger, respectively;
• and
• determining whether the vehicle parked in said at least one parking bay contravenes the designated parking rule for that parking bay based on the arrival and the departure triggers, whereby a parking infringement notice can be issued to a registered owner of the vehicle based on a registration plate of the vehicle recognised from the buffer if the vehicle parked in the at least one parking bay has been determined as contravening the designated parking rule.

An automated vehicle parking management server, including

• a sensor module configured to derive arrival and departure triggers for a vehicle parked in at least one parking bay having a designated parking rule from information from at least one sensor configured to detect presence of said vehicle parked in said at least one parking bay;
• an image acquisition module configured to acquire a buffer of images from at least one image acquisition means configured to acquire a series of images over time of the at least one parking bay upon receipt of said arrival trigger and/or said departure trigger from the sensor module, whereby the buffer extends for an allocated series of said images acquired immediately before the arrival trigger and/or the departure trigger to a further allocated series of said images acquired immediately after the arrival trigger and/or the departure trigger, respectively;
• and
• a citation module configured to determine whether the vehicle parked in said at least one parking bay contravenes the designated parking rule based on the arrival and the departure triggers received from the sensor module, whereby a parking infringement notice can be issued to a registered owner of the vehicle based on a registration plate of the vehicle recognised from the buffer if the vehicle has been determined as contravening the designated parking rule.