By Chris Scheppmann

The urban transportation landscape is rapidly changing, with ride sharing services becoming ubiquitous and self-driving vehicles on the horizon. No longer do most travelers drive themselves to a parking facility near their ultimate destinations; today they are just as likely to be dropped off by an Uber or Lyft driver right at the curb in front of their destination. 

This trend has had a significant impact on downtown traffic, cluttering the curb with unmanaged vehicle movement and creating an unsafe environment for drivers and pedestrians alike. And curbs will become even more cluttered when self-driving vehicles begin to populate our streets in significant numbers, dropping off their passengers and then taking off.

In fact, over the past two years we have already begun to experience these changes because of the Covid-19 pandemic. At the height of the initial wave of Covid, restaurants and stores introduced curbside pickup to serve their customers (and to survive). In many neighborhoods curbsides are now more like a free-for-all, with drivers pulling up wherever they like for however long they want. The proliferation of self-driving vehicles will just exacerbate this already serious issue.

A Technological Solution

The answer to these new curbside pressures can be found in Intelligent Camera Technology. Intelligent Camera Technology leverages the latest advancements in vison-based software technology to provide accurate and affordable curb management. The cameras monitor curbside activity in real time, analyzing what types of vehicles are using the curb and for how long, and transmitting that information to a cloud-based platform that determines whether each vehicle’s use of the curb is appropriate. 

The heart of the curb management suite is specialized software that constantly receives data from curbside cameras and analyzes that data in real-time. The software manages a host of essential curb-related tasks, including TNC monitoring,…