That person is Joseph Zitara. The chief technology officer of Montreal-based company Underlabs was embittered after receiving a ticket last March and decided to dismiss it all its engineers on the design of Parky.AI, a mobile application launched on iOS on Wednesday.

This tool uses artificial intelligence (AI) to detect whether a vehicle is allowed to park in the desired location.

How it works: Open the Parky.AI application and hold the lens of your smartphone in front of a post with all the no parking signs. A first AI reads the signs, a second is trained to analyze the data and determine whether the driver is allowed to park in the desired spot or not.

If the answer is inaccurate, users can report it to the app. It’s also the only data the company collects to train its algorithm, hosted on servers in Quebec.

” We have achieved over 83% accuracy for simple signs, and 74% accuracy for complex situations involving up to four signs on the same post. »

Those stats are improving every day, according to the chief technology officer, who is aiming for at least 90% reliability.

Complex panels

Why AI? : There is so much data and the possibilities are so great that it is not possible to achieve such a precise result with simple programming.says Joseph Zitara.

To train its AIs, the team sent people to Montreal, Longueuil and Laval to photograph 823 panels, simple (one to two constraints) and complex (three to four constraints).

” We are four engineers, a lawyer and a creative director on the team and still couldn’t decipher all the characters we encountered. »

There is one case in particular where it finally became clear that the posters were simply not written for the general public, only for the police.says Underlabs’ chief technology officer with a laugh.

The team even tried asking on-duty park rangers to explain their findings on specific signs, but to no avail: All we were told was that they were not in their work district.he said.

According to Joseph Zitara, the AI ​​assistant will certainly be useful for motorists driving in Montreal. It could also be popular with tourists and people who don’t speak French as the restrictions are only written in that language.

The sequel to Parky.AI

Parky.AI is free to use with a limited number of requests. Underlabs offers unlimited subscriptions that retail for $1 per month or $9 per year.

In the coming weeks, new features will be added to the application, such as the ability to receive a notification 10 minutes before a parking ban begins.

The technical director also expressed his reassurance for owners of Android devices for which an application is being developed.

Parky.AI was released on the App Store on May 9th and is already the second most downloaded navigation app in Canada after Google Maps. By early Thursday evening, Parky.AI had read over 1,000 parking signs.

If the parking assistant was designed for Montreal – where the panels are most complex – Joseph Zitara is convinced that it could be effective anywhere in Quebec.