Background
Private transportation is currently the most common form of transportation in the United States. Cars are an essential commodity, with each household in America typically having at least one car. However, finding an open parking space can be a daunting task, especially with the surge in the number of city vehicles.
Navigating through a congested parking lot often leads to wasted time, increased greenhouse gas emissions, and traffic accidents due to distracted drivers. The average American driver wastes 17 hours every year searching for parking. That adds up to $73 billion in lost time, fuel, and emissions searching for parking across all drivers nationally. Many parking lots worldwide have implemented a smart parking system that provides information about the available parking spaces at each instant, but without the added capability of guiding the drivers to these spaces.
Invention Description
Researchers at Arizona State have developed a reliable outdoor parking system to assist users in finding the nearest available parking spot from their current location. This invention is an innovative intelligent parking system that not only monitors the parking lot using an infrastructure monocular camera to identify the number of available parking spaces, but also pinpoints the location of these spaces in the parking lot. This system then provides the driver with a navigation route to the nearest available parking spot from their location at each instance. Preliminary results demonstrate that this solution can significantly simplify the parking process for human drivers, making it safer by reducing the risk of accidents and making the process more convenient and environmentally friendly.
Potential Applications:
Benefits and Advantages: