Mercedes-Benz Tweet Fleet. By Jung von Matt/Neckar.

Cars tweet empty parking spaces

The Active Parking Assist from Mercedes-Benz recognizes empty parking spaces by simply passing them. That brought us to the idea: If the car knows where the empty parking spaces are – then everybody should know.

Just before Christmas when parking slots were hard to find, the Mercedes-Benz Tweet Fleet with its Active Parking Assist tweeted empty parking spaces in downtown Stuttgart.

The cars automatically generated a tweet with GPS data out of every empty parking space they passed. Via Arduino the onboard electronics were connected to a GPS/GPRS-Shield. Tweets were generated with a PHP Relay which sent the GPS-Data. This is how people could find empty parking spaces near them on twitter and even be navigated there by a linked Google map.