Bird, the publicly traded environmentally-friendly electric mobility company providing affordable transportation solutions to communities just recently launched its new parking technology, the Bird Visual Parking System (VPS) on Wednesday. The tech, which will be available for free to city partners will require zero infrastructure or tech investments on behalf of the community.
Shares of Bird (NYSE:BRDS) have been up 11% since Wednesday as it gears up to announce its earnings on Monday the 16th after the market close. TFN also covered Bird’s pilot to test battery-powered attachments for wheelchairs to increase e-mobility access for the disabled community.
How the Visual Parking System (VPS) works
Bird’s VPS is a scalable & revolutionary new parking assist, powered by Google’s ARCore Geospatial API. This tech enables Bird to geo-localise parked scooters with pinpoint accuracy by leveraging years of Google’s 3D scanning, AR technology and Google Maps Street View data from all over the world. With this new technology, Bird riders can more accurately and precisely end their eco-friendly rides without hassle while adhering to community parking guidelines in an effort to keep walkways and ramps obstruction-free.
This revolutionary tech is embedded into Bird’s app and can be used on both iOS as well as Android. This makes it easier to scale to all Bird riders over time while ensuring its immunity to theft or vandalism, unlike other parking technologies.
It takes three easy & seamless steps to use Bird VPS. Riders are first prompted to quickly scan the surrounding area with their smartphone’s camera. Bird then instantaneously compares the rider’s images to those in Google’s knowledge database and Street View images, analysing details using Google’s new ARCore Geospatial API. On achieving the required centimetre-level geolocation, Bird VPS will either allow a rider to park if it complies with local city parking requirements or prompt them to correct the vehicle’s parking before ending the ride.
Bird VPS is free of charge for Bird’s city partners and is currently being piloted in New York City, San Francisco and San Diego with expansion plans targeting more of Bird’s 400+ partner cities.
“The new ARCore Geospatial API from Google is an absolute game-changer for micro-mobility that allows us to offer cities a first-of-its-kind Visual Parking System that’s unmatched in terms of accuracy and scalability,” sighted Justin Balthrop, Bird’s CTO adding, “With Bird VPS, we’re able to meet cities’ number one need, proper parking, in a way that’s never been possible before, and we’re able to do it at scale in cities around the world thanks to Google’s robust global data and technology.”
Founded by transportation pioneer Travis VanderZanden, Bird remains dedicated to bringing affordable, environmentally-friendly transportation solutions such as e-scooters and e-bikes to communities across the globe. Its rapid expansion has grown to see the company providing fleets of shared micro electric vehicles to riders in more than 400 cities globally.
