Self Parking System in Automobile – An Aid for Manual Parking

We all agree that growing traffic is a big problem especially in the metro cities. Among many reasons of traffic congestion in crowded areas one of the prime reasons is wandering around your destination for the search of parking place. Parallel parking along the roadside is the most efficient parking technique as far as usage of space on the road is concerned but at the same time could be a nightmare for drivers due to with very limited space to maneuver the vehicle. It is quite a task for drivers to manually park a vehicle in crowded spaces without banging into other vehicles.

These days we hear a lot about autonomous cars which will be driven automatically through computer systems and based on inputs from various sensors. Fully autonomous car may be a distant reality as far as full fledged commercial availability is concerned, however many car makers have added certain autonomous features to their vehicles to ease out driving like automatic transmission, cruise control etc. One such feature is Self Parking which automatically parks the vehicle in the crowded parking spaces. Drivers just need to sit back and relax!

How Self Parking Works? - Self parking takes care of steering control, adaptive cruise control and lane centering steering etc on its own with minimal manual intervention. There are various sensors on vehicle that work in sync to make it happen. These sensors are image recognition sensor, GPS mapping deployed on the front and the back of car to detect the nearby obstacles. Proper timing and space gauging is done in real time to avoid collision. Some systems use LIDAR which stands for Light Detection and Ranging. Similar to RADAR, LIDAR is a remote sensing method that uses light in the form of a pulsed laser to measure ranges accurately. Self parking enabled cars to also feature wireless communication systems to communicate among themselves to exchange data like speed, steering angle, distance etc to ensure more safety.

Most of the high end cars for example BMW, Mercedes etc support these automations. Volvo for example lets the driver get off the vehicle and use Mobile App to park the vehicle. App also help locate the vehicle in the parking lot. There are other companies like Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, Ford, Honda, Nissan, Tesla, Hyundai and Kia that are working toward making this technology commercially more viable.

By : Upma Gaba – Asst. Prof., CSE, Chitkara University H.P.

References

• https://cdn-images-2.medium.com/max/800/1*NTnv7VFqWU6wd56gIAtLIA.png
• http://www.teslarati.com/how-does-tesla-autopark-parallel-parking-work/
• http://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/21580134-autonomous-vehicles-are-arriving-piecemeal-more-and-more-driving-tasks-are