Durham College AI Kiosk
Durham College’s Office of Research Service, Innovation and Entrepreneurship (ORSIE)
Giving students a hands-on industry experience.
Applied research at Durham College, facilitated by ORSIE, solves industry and social challenges through innovation and collaboration.
By engaging industry, faculty, students, and the community-at-large in research projects, ORSIE addresses the needs of a technology-driven knowledge economy. ORSIE is the single point of contact for industry, government, and community groups interested in collaborative applied research that has an impact. The talent, facilities, and capabilities of those within the campus and community have the power to advance economic prosperity within the Durham Region.
ORSIE Industry Partner
Precise ParkLink and Durham College’s working relationship began in 2015 when the college selected Precise ParkLink as its parking management services provider. Since then, this partnership has evolved beyond parking, as Precise ParkLink helps facilitate student education by being an industry partner for ORSIE.
Proactive Research and Development
Identifying Opportunities for ORSIE students.
Each year, Precise ParkLink’s Research and Development division meets to brainstorm its wish list of proactive solutions that can be developed to contribute to our customers’ success as well as our own internal business needs. As an ORSIE industry partner, we identify suitable opportunities during this process that ORSIE can be involved in.
In 2018, we identified a project involving the integration of artificial intelligence (AI) with parking access and control that ORSIE students could assist with: an AI-powered virtual parking assistant kiosk capable of answering questions related to parking regulations.
AI in Parking Becomes a Reality
Successful results from a mutually beneficial relationship.
ORSIE students selected for this project were given the opportunity to work on an AI solution that would help improve thousands, if not millions, of day-to-day parking experiences across Canada.
From the get-go, the students dove deeply into the fundamentals of AI and learned what was required to make it functional for Precise ParkLink’s project. The first phase of the project involved creating an AI application, named Joy. The second phase of the project involved establishing a seamless integration between the AI application—Joy—and hardware components—the kiosk. ORSIE students were designated a Precise ParkLink mentor, Justin Waltenbury, Junior Software Engineer and ORSIE alumni who oversaw the project full-time.
To date, students from the ORSIE program have:
Developed a multilingual language function for the virtual parking assistant
Optimized AI development turn-around time
Created a feedback system to improve response accuracy
THE RESULT
Integrating the project into society
After 8 months of hard work, ORSIE and Precise ParkLink unveiled Joy, the first-ever AI-based virtual parking assistant deployed in Canada. Today, Mr. Waltenbury and the ORSIE students continue to develop Joy on an on-going basis.
Joy’s new home is in the main foyer of Humber River Hospital, where she continues to learn through public interaction, studying the many different ways the human brain works in order to ensure responses to staff, patients and visitors at Humber River Hospital are correct. Both ORSIE and Waltenbury continue to work diligently to improve Joy’s day-to-day performance, functionalities and user interface, and experience design elements. Some would argue she’s the coolest science project ever.
“Joy is the Siri of parking,” says Waltenbury. “On a fundamental level, the solution works in the exact same way.”
THE FINAL WORDS
“I see a real commitment to talent development at Precise ParkLink. They work with our students to help them advance their skills, which is something we are very proud of.”
— DEBBIE MCKEE DEMCZYK
Dean, Research Services, Innovation and Entrepreneurship
Durham College
“Students have gained numerous valuable skills that make them more employable, specifically communication, working with a team, accountability, and problem-solving.”
— VIBHA TYAGI
Manager, Applied Research Partnerships
Durham College
“Precise ParkLink is proud to be partners with Durham College and ORSIE. The ORSIE program allows us to provide students the opportunity to grow their technical and communication skills required to enter the workforce while also offering our customers the latest and the greatest technology available in the marketplace. Precise ParkLink is devoted to ORSIE and its students by annually committing to proactive research and development projects that we know we are capable of integrating into society.”
— JOE RITACCA
Director, Research and Development
Precise ParkLink
“The skills I gained working on a Precise ParkLink and ORSIE joint project was a solid foundation in AI. Additionally, it helped me in my current role at Precise ParkLink to estimate project deadlines and do requirements gathering—basically all the foundations to making an application.”
— JUSTIN WALTENBURY
Junior Software Engineer, Research and Development
Precise ParkLink
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UNIVERSITY & COLLEGE PARKING MANAGEMENT SOLUTIONS
About Precise ParkLink
CANADA’S PARKING INDUSTRY LEADER FOR MORE THAN 30 YEARS.
When Precise ParkLink was founded more than 30 years ago, the company was a two-person field operation with a simple aspiration: to make a difference in the world of parking automation.
Since then, Precise ParkLink has grown into a nation-wide managed services and technology firm with more than 700 employees across Canada, a head office in Toronto, and 13 supporting offices across the country.
But what sets us apart from other parking operators isn’t where we are, it’s what we are: a full-service parking solutions provider. One source for all your parking-related needs.
Precise ParkLink manages thousands of parking lots on behalf of hundreds of property owners. We supply cutting-edge technology and services to thousands of clients in the healthcare, municipal, commercial, institutional, and private sectors.
Being a vertically integrated company puts us in a unique position. We can provide a level of management and technical integration that is best-in-class. Just ask the hundreds of clients to whom we’ve delivered cost-effective and customer-focused solutions over the years.