"Parking Spotter" which detects the availability of parking lots in a car and shares it in the cloud

Working to find parking spaces is sometimes annoying when you go out to shopping or vacation destinations by car. Many people have experienced running round about seeking empty spaces in a multi-storey parking lot at a shopping mall, but automakers Ford is using a cloud technology to eliminate such a troublesome system "Parking Spotter"We are developing.

Mobility Experiment: Parking Spotter, Atlanta | Ford Media Center
https://media.ford.com/content/fordmedia/fna/us/en/news/2015/01/06/mobility-experiment-parking-spotter-atlanta.html

Situations where Parking Spotter is actually useful are introduced in the concept movie created by Ford.

Parking Spotter: A Ford Smart Mobility Experiment - YouTube


In Ford's survey, it turns out that the work that the driver feels as a burden in daily driving is "parking".


A voice saying that it was struggling to find the space for parking as well as the operation to fit the car into a narrow parking space well. There are only 20% of people who can find the parking space smoothly, and 80% people are always wandering in search of space.


At the same time as being frustrated with searching for space, Ford thinks that it is also a matter of continuing to emit exhaust gas by consuming useless fuel.


"Parking Spotter" is the system that Ford is developing to make such "vacant search" efficient. In this system, we utilize obstacle sensors and cameras mounted on the car body to find free space in the parking lot and make it a database.


The mechanism is like this. Vehicles equipped with obstacle radars and surrounding cameras will monitor the availability of actual parking lots and upload data with GPS information to the cloud. Information will be shared with vehicles looking for a parking lot to make it easier to find the empty space, and you can also "book" the space on the system and navigate to that place. When another car is trying to park in that space, it is also made to be informed that it is already reserved by an alarm sound or the like.


Availability can be confirmed on smartphone applications. As information becomes more and more uploaded as it gets into a crowded parking lot, it is thought that the accuracy will be higher and it will be more efficient.


Although it is a system of "Parking Spotter" which can be said to be an interesting approach which was not possible in the past, it became possible by spreading information terminals like smartphones to society, in actual operation, consistency with vehicles not equipped with a system It seems to be said that increasing sex is becoming more important. It might be improved by installing it not only on smartphones but also on standard on-board car navigation systems.


Parking Spotter seems to be the stage of the experiment to the last, and it seems that the point of practical application is not yet established. Many drivers seem to have a merit system, so it seems that many drivers feel they should be good things quickly.