It was my first visit to Terminal 5 at Heathrow Airport and I parked in the short term car park while attending a meeting at the Sofitel luxury hotel next door.  While waiting for the lift I saw this machine:

It gets you to insert your parking ticket in to the slot and then type in your car registration.  normally this is a challenge however I noticed that my registration was printed on my ticket! 

Once over coming the shock that I was already being tracked I figured that they could not know where my car was as I parked it twice in the car park, moving it to be at the end nearer the hotel.  Surely this would have confused the system….

But no.  When you type in the registration on the screen, the display rotates the schema of the car park and then identifies the section in which you have parked and provides guidance on how to find your car!   We tested it with a colleagues car and it works.  This is an interesting use of technology and really quite helpful.

What struck me was that there were no obvious bits of equipment to make you think that this system was in place and tracking your car.  The whole system is very discreet and makes you wonder what else they are spying on!

I will have to go back for a better look.