Students develop online app to ease parking space woes

University of San Jose Recoletos students Jesury Thomas Gadiane, Noel Daniel Seldura and Kevin Cerdon (second, third and fourth from the left) join officials of Smart Communications during the awarding ceremony of the 15th Smart Wireless Engineering Education Program (SWEEP) Innovation and Excellence Awards at the Discovery Primea Hotel in Makati City on May 10, 2019. Smart officials are Clint Cation, Head of Technology Innovation Center, Smart Communications, Inc. (leftmost); Stephanie Orlino, education programs senior manager of Community Partnerships of Smart Public Affairs Group (second from right); and Ramon Isberto, group head for Public Affair – PLDT and Smart (rightmost). |Photo from the SWEEP Facebook page.

CEBU CITY, Philippines — Are you finding it hard to find a parking space in Cebu?

Three students from the University of San Jose Recoletos (USJR) may just have the answer to your parking woes through an online application prototype called “CarSpace.”

Noel Daniel Seldura, 26, Kevin Cerdon, 24,  Jesury Thomas Gadiane, 24, are sophomore students taking up Bachelor of Science in Information Technology (BSIT) at USJR who make up the team that developed CarSpace.

Eric Magto, the team’s mentor, said it took them three months to finish the prototype.

“CarSpace is a mobile application for drivers having a difficulty of looking for a parking space. We observed that there’s a difficulty in looking for a place to park,” says Magto. 

This feat enabled the team to earn the top plum in the Smart Wireless Engineering Education Program (SWEEP), a technology competition organized by Smart Communications that aims to provide college students with the platform to create innovative applications that solve consumer pain points.

The USJR students bested 19 other teams hailing from different schools around the country after a rigorous screening process and a boot camp during the 15th SWEEP Innovation and Excellence Awards.

The awarding ceremony was held on May 10, 2019, at Discovery Primea Hotel in Makati City.

The team took home a cash prize of P 300,00.

Magto says they only included parking lot owners, residential houses and owners of unutilized lots to provide parking spaces.

He says they did not include establishments such as malls and other commercial spaces in the app as it was not feasible for their start-up project during the time of development.

Magto says users only need to download the app and then check the nearby parking spaces and check the corresponding fees for the parking spaces.

But users may have to wait for two years before the app will be available for public download because the students said will still focus on experimenting on CarSpace.

Magto says the students will make the CarSpace prototype as their Capstone project for their thesis.

With an innovative project like this, let’s hope we don’t have to wait for two years for this app to be available.

Crossing our fingers!/ celr