2013 4th International Conference on Intelligent Systems, Modelling and Simulation

Intelligent Parking System for Car Parking Guidance and Damage Notification
Sanaa Alfatihi, Soukaina Chihab and Yassine Salih Alj
School of Science and Engineering Al Akhawayn University Ifrane, Morocco {s.alfatihi, s.chihab, y.salihalj}@aui.ma

AbstractThis paper presents an innovative intelligent parking system (IPS) that has two functions: Car parking guidance and car damage notification. IPS is an advanced automatic driving system that consists of car guidance which proposes oriented assistance for drivers while parking. IPS has some interesting functionalities that ensure an easy parking without damages, parking within less time in any suitable spots and getting a notification if the parked car has been scratched or damaged while the driver is not in the car. The main purpose of the IPS system considers a control car system, an algorithmic move car system and a damage notification system to the vehicle. During the parking process, the driver is alerted by visual and sound signals. The IPS system provides a path planning image that is displayed on the on-board computer system to indicate the directions for the wheels. The damage notification system consists of car-camera shock sensors placed in the front and rear of the vehicle that record the incident when the driver is not in the car. Keywords-Control car system; notification; path plannig; on-board computer system.

I.

INTRODUCTION

Parking is an acquired ability many drivers struggle with because of several reasons; such as the traffic jam, the small spots reserved for parking, and poor driving skills. Because of this, cars that have the capacity to use automated and self-parking system have become more widespread and admired in new vehicles mainly as it proposes an added value to the customer [1]. Poor parking skills can result in car scratches and damages, disappointment of the driver, and loss of time and loss in confidence. Most of the time, car drivers dont pay attention to some possible spots as it will require them more effort or an external person to guide them into the parking spot. In addition, sometimes, when a driver parks his car in an uncontrolled area or a tiny spot, there is a risk that the vehicle gets scratched or damaged without that the driver gets notified. Therefore, modern parking systems for meeting driver parking needs are required. Using modern electronic technologies, smart oriented assistance parking, and wireless connections in the vehicle help improving the driver parking skills and reduce the risk for car damages. This paper suggests an innovative and smart parking system which is the
2166-0662/13 $26.00 2013 IEEE DOI 10.1109/ISMS.2013.35 24

intelligent parking system (IPS) that has two functionalities which are oriented-guidance parking and damages notification for vehicles incidents. In 2004, Toyota Motor Corporation succeeded to develop the autonomous parking system and implement it in the Hybrid Prius cars and later the Lexus models [2]. In Europe, The German BMW Corporation started using this self-parking technology in all their new models especially for the horizontal parking situations [3]. The IPS system involves three main mechanisms which are the control car system, the algorithmic move system, and the damage notification system in order to have a secure parking process without damages, as well as getting notified when the car is damaged while parked in uncontrolled area. During the parking process the driver is alerted by visual and sound signals. For the visual signal that appears in the dashboard computer system, it lets the driver know how to move into the spot beside the front car, and behind its back. For the sound signal, it is for showing how near the car is from the boundaries of the parking spot and for avoiding objects. Furthermore, the IPS system which is autonomous, notify the damages done in the car while the driver is not in the vehicle by placing the car camera shock sensors that will be connected to the dashboard system. The car camera shock sensors work by emitting a red light when the driver starts the car. The driver accesses the notification via a picture or a video recorded in the display unit. The paper is organized as follows. In Sec. II, a background to the related work and a contribution of the IPS system are provided. Sec. III presents the intelligent parking system with its design discussion. In Sec. IV, a draft cost analysis is provided. Finally, in Sec. V a conclusion of the paper is given. II. RELATED WORK AND MOTIVATION

Over the past few years, several vehicle manufacturers started including modern technologies within the cars for parking guidance. Among them there is BMWs selfparking system, Mercedes parking assistance system, Audis guidance parking system and Toyotas intelligent parking assistance system.

A. BMWs Self-Parking System BMW Corporation has developed a parking-assist technology that can park the car while the driver stands outside and watches as the internal robotics park it using a combination of sensors [4]. However, this novel technology does not work everywhere because not only the component of the system should be implemented into the car but also in the chosen parking spot. By installing a reflective lens in the wall of the parking spot and a video camera in the front of the car, the system can compute the distance and angle regarding the lens. The other sensors try to check if there is at least 8 inches of space on the left and right sides of the vehicle. According to the data gathered from the sensors, the reflective lens, the video camera, the accelerator pedal, the brake and the steering wheel are automatically controlled. A prototype of the self-parking system has been implemented in the BMW 730i. B. Mercedes Parking Assistance System Mercedes Corporation has newly implemented parking assistance system in its new series production [5]. This autonomous system works by using radar technology to help the driver find a suitable parking space and park the vehicle. While driving at a speed no more than 40 km/h, the radar sensors mounted in the front and the rear of the car check if the parking spot on all sides of the car are adequate for the parking process. Therefore, a blue P symbol is displayed within the instrument panel if the system finds a sufficient parking spot and if the car speed is no more than 16 km/h. Once, the driver stops the car in the space displayed on the computer dashboard system, the colored arrows give to the driver an idea about how best to park. The red line illustrates the steering angle of the current position. The yellow line illustrates the steering angle that is required for parking. The driver should turn the steering wheel until the two lines get identical and coincide. When the two lines coincide, the lines change to a single green line. During the whole parking process, the assistance system continuously manages the steering angle and the car position. C. Audis Guidance Parking System Audi Corporation has developed the guidance parking system that assist and maneuver the parking process [6]. The modern system is a parking aid device for the driver that looks for a suitable parking space, detects obstacles in blind spots and even gives reliable sound and visual warnings. The approach of the system proposes that it works using three steps: the scanning, the positioning, and the maneuvering steps. Through their system, they took even into consideration the constraints of the surroundings that may interfere during the autonomous parking. They implemented the autonomous system by

using up to eight ultrasonic sensors into the bumpers that detect the distance to the obstacle and send the distance measurement to the computer dashboard. As soon as the distance decreases to less than 120 centimeters in front of the vehicle or less than 160 centimeters behind it, an intermittent signal sounds. If the distance falls to less than 30 centimeters, the signal becomes a continuous tone. According to the data processed by the computer, the display unit will monitor the driver by showing guidelines in the panel. Additionally, for finding a parking space, the system works uses 10 ultrasonic sensors that search for an adequate spot beside the road. Driving by up to 30 km/h; once a spot has been detected, the system computes the ideal parking path. Then, the system completes the parking process approximately automatically since the driver needs to just to accelerate and brake while the steering wheels are automatically guided. D. Toyotas Intelligent Parking Assistance Toyota has developed an intelligent parking assistance that consists of accurate oriented car guidance and a tracking algorithm that controls efficiently the vehicle parking [7]. The system works using four ultrasonic wave sensors implemented into the corners of the bumper, a steering-sensor and a camera installed in the rear of the vehicle. Once the ultrasonic sensors detects the obstacle, the driver gets notified with a sound and visual signal represented by a lamp alerts. Additionally, the steering-sensor uses the steering angle to detect the distance of approaching obstacles and notifies the driver by a sonar indication. The camera implemented displays the view when parking in a garage in the dashboard computer system. The system gives parking car guidance to the driver by assisting the steering wheel operation. The main goal of the system is to provide an automated parking system that helps drivers to fit the car into parking spots accurately without any damages. E. Motivation In this paper, we suggest an extension to what existing self-parking cars projects have already proposed. The proposed extension build upon the previous work is about developing an intelligent parking system that not only would orient the driver while parking but also that would notify the driver about any damages or scratches done in the car, when the driver is away or while he is parking in uncontrolled area. The main idea is to apply a control car system, an algorithmic move system, and a damage notification system to the vehicle. Moreover, we view the contribution as follows. Illustrate how the damage notification system is able to complement the existing oriented

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guidance system to notify the driver when his car has been damaged. Formally define the novel damage notification system for damages notifications that is associated to the IPS system. III. INTELLIGENT PARKING SYSTEM DESIGN

deactivated when the vehicle exceeds a certain speed; this is to avoid nuisance warnings in slow moving traffic. The main goals of the ultrasonic sensors are as follows [9] [10]. Measuring the distances to nearby objects at low level. Checking the obstacles using the echo time formula to display the distance of how far they are. The echo time represents the difference between the time of pulse transmission and detection of the reflected signal to calculate the distance which is given by d=v.t, (1)

In this section, we describe the overall configuration of the IPS system which consists of three main mechanisms which are the control car system, the algorithmic move car system and the damage notification system. Indeed, the system should be able to give an automated guidance to the driver and would also enable users to get notified when someone damages their car while their vehicle is parked in an uncontrolled area. Fig. 1 illustrates the block diagram of the system design of IPS. The elements of each subsystem are as follows.
Intelligent Parking ISystem

Control Car System

Algorithmic Move Car

Damage Notification System

-Ultrasonic Sensors - Buzzer Unit - Display Unit

-Actuators - Move Car System

-Car Camera Shock Sensors

where d is the distance to the obstacle, v the speed of the sound wave signal, and t the difference between the time pulse transmission and detection of the reflected signal. The average speed of sound at 10C is approximately 335m/s [10]. In the IPS system, the ultrasonic sensors are placed in the front and rear of the car .Ultrasonic sensors transmits sound waves between 25 kHz and 50 kHz [10]. They use the reflected energy to analyze and detect the status of a parking space, which means detecting if the place found is suitable for parking or not. Once the process begins a short ultrasonic waves are released approximately every 60 milliseconds, to determine the occurrence of an obstacle. 2) Display Unit

Figure 1. Block diagram of the proposed Intelligent Parking System.

A. Control Car System The control car system is used for controlling forward/backward and left/right movement and this system contains all the hardware (Ultrasonic sensors, Distance sensors and Buzzer unit) and its associated software (Display unit) [8]. The system begins by detecting whether the space is large enough and whether there are no obstacles. Once the driver finds a potential spot, the control car system starts the process of object detection and oriented guidance for the parking process [8]. 1) Ultrasonic Sensors Ultrasonic sensors are sensing systems that work as emitter of short ultrasonic pulses and receiver of the reflected signal which illustrates the presence of an obstacle or not. Ultrasonic Sensors work as detectors at low level of accuracy that are placed in the front/ back and left/right of the car. Front sensors are generally activated by pressing a button and then automatically

The visual signal that uses the light-emitting diodes (LED) and the liquid crystal display (LCD) readouts reflects the direction and distance to obstacles [11]. Those directions are illustrated by arrows that vary from green to red when the vehicle is close to the boundaries of the other car. Thanks to the distance to obstacles d given by the ultrasonic sensors, the on-board computer system displays an image of four arrows that represents the distance between the car and its boundaries in the parking spot [12]. Once the parking process begins the display unit is activated. After turning the wheels and the picture is displayed on the dashboard, the driver is responsible for checking to see if the representative box on the screen of the display unit correctly identifies the parking space, and the car's rear view appears on display unit. The display unit that we used is an LCD display unit, which uses colors that move from green line until red line color and adjustment arrows to help the driver by indicating where to turn the wheels and when to stop. Those colors depend on the distance between the car and the obstacle D. If the car is far from the obstacle, the driver will see green line color in the display unit. Once the display unit begins showing the colors and the

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arrows, automatically the buzzer unit begin to emit sounds [12]. 3) Buzzer Unit The audible signal is represented by beeps that are continuously heard during parking process. The buzzer unit works in parallel with the display unit. The frequency of the beeps increases when the car is extremely close to the obstacle or to the boundaries [13]. Therefore, the frequency of the beeps depends on the distance to the obstacle retrieved from (1) and is given by f= k . d, (2)

2) Move Car System Move Car System (MCS) contains a microcontroller that controls the steering wheel and the brakes. The MCS system covers the detection of the parking space and the parallel parking algorithms. The parking space detection and the parking algorithm will get notified from the ultrasonic sensors and the ultrasonic sensors in order to show the movement and directions to the driver in the display unit. Once a parking space has been detected, the parking algorithm is called. The parking algorithm gives the steps to the driver that he should follow to have a good parking without any damages and scratches [16]. After detecting an obstacle by the sensors, the brake, throttle, and the steering actuators allow the MCS to change the movement and direction of the vehicle as needed. Once the ultrasonic and distance sensors emit a digital signal to the Move car system, the received values will determine the direction of the wheels [16]. A software is required to connect to the hardware part and the MCS that works with an algorithm which processes the received data from the sensors, and convert it to the buzzer unit and the display unit. C. Damage Notification System The damage notification system (DNS) is an electronic system that consists of car-camera shock sensors installed in the front and rear of the car so as to record any incident when the driver is away, especially when the car is parked in an uncontrolled zone. The purpose of DNS is notifying the driver if another car hits and damages the parked vehicle as the car-camera shock sensor sends a signal to the computer dashboard system indicating the intensity of the damage. Depending on the severity of the shock, the computer dashboard system sends a warning red light signal as soon as the driver started the car and displayed the video and image of the shock in the display unit. The car-camera shock sensor consists of a central electrical contact around a cylinder that is connected to a secondary electrical contact and contains a metal ball [17]. All these elements are linked to a camera. Fig.3 illustrates the design of the car camera shock sensor. The sensor is moved from its resting position when the car is hitting or vibrating, the metal ball rolls in the cylinder. As the ball is rolling, it breaks the connection between the central electrical contact and the secondary electrical contact which closes the switch notifying the computer dashboard system of a shock. Based on this notification, the camera starts recording a 10 seconds video of the incident. The problem with the DNS is that the computer dashboard system has no way to measure the intensity of the shocks and vibrations, which may result sometimes in false shock notifications [17].

where f is the frequency of the beeps, k is the proportional factor and d is the distance to an obstacle. B. Algorithmic Move Car System The algorithmic move car system illustrated in Fig. 2 represents the connection between the control car system and the microcontroller. It gives an oriented assistance to the car and implements its directions movement which is shown in the display unit [14]. 1) Actuators Actuators are motors for moving or regulating a system that convert an electronic input into motion. In this context the used actuators are motors that are linked to the brakes, the throttle and the steering that would monitor the low level control of these devices. The brakes, the throttle and the steering actuators would be connected to the control system in order to change the direction or the movement of the car when it gets near an obstacle. After checking that there is no obstacle in the parking space, the driver begins the process of parking. He starts turning the wheels of the car and regulating the speed of the vehicle by pressing and releasing the brake pedal. Moving forward until the vehicles rear bumper passes the rear wheel of the car parked in front of the parking spot [15].
Beeps done by the Buzzer Unit Parking space measurem ent done by Ultrasonic sensors

Microcontroller
Display directions in the LCD

Figure 2. Block diagram of the algorithmic move car system.

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Input: Vibrating/ Hitting the car

Central Electrical Contact

Secondary Electrical Contact

Camera

Metal ball rolling to create electric current

Output: Display Video of shock in the display unit

considered Xenos XCT-XRM-0900 Visual Display Unit is renowned as the best LCD/LED display unit used for cars in the market because of its very good criteria [20]. The fourth component in the IPS system is the buzzer unit which is used as an alarm for the driver. The considered DT104 buzzer (BB-03V-2) offers flexible programming services [21]. The remaining component is the car camera shock system, which is used for the damage notification system. The considered Dual Camera Vehicle Blackbox GPS Logger will not only film the trip but would also record shocks and back track incidents while the driver is away [22]. As a result, this car system is not too expensive especially for its afforded advantage and for its car guidance and car damage notification. The total cost of IPS has been calculated to be 1575 USD. This amount is calculated as shown in Table. I. For sure, not all individuals can afford buying this feature, but people started buying them because of their usability. In the near future, more IPS systems would be used and would be widespread in all cars. V. CONCLUSION

Figure 3. Block diagram of the Camera Shock Sensor Cylinder.

IV.

COST ANALYSIS

The aim of this study was to design a safe self-parking car system that would be friendly used and that would help the drivers to park in a good and secure manner. Nowadays, the IPS has become much demanded system because of its parking advantages of helping the drivers to park without damages and in less time. This study consists of developing and building the IPS system with a good quality components and a convenient price. While constructing the system, we targeted to choose carefully the components. The objective is to assemble a system that would be strong and that will last for a long period of time. The IPS is made up of two ultrasonic sensors, one microcontroller, two car camera shock sensors, one buzzer unit and one display unit. For the ultrasonic sensors we considered the Parallaxs PING))) which is very renowned in the ultrasonic distance sensors technology [18]. It provides a very low-cost and easy method of distance measurement. This sensor is perfect for any number of applications that require to perform measurements between moving or stationary objects, it has a reasonable cost of 30 $. Also, we considered the microcontroller PIC16F877A which is a CMOS flashbased 8-bit microcontroller [19]. It has 40 input/output pins and 20MHz clock frequency [19]. The microcontroller controls all the sensors and uses their outputs to compute the parking space and to instruct the driver to park the vehicle safely. It also uses the LCD to display the results and the parking instructions. The

This paper presented an intelligent parking system (IPS). The aim of this study is to develop an automated system parking aid device and a damage notification system. The considering mechanisms that are the control car system, the algorithmic move system and the damage notification system represent the design of IPS. Once the control car system starts, the parking surrounding is scanned using ultrasonic sensors. This scanned information is processed by the algorithmic move car system to identify the parking directions of the vehicle. The novel contribution of the paper includes the damage notification system for incidents notifications. The system is implemented using a car camera shock sensors placed in the front and rear of the vehicle. The primary motivation behind this contribution was to help the driver gets notified when the car is damaged by another car while it is parked in an uncontrolled area. The car camera shock sensors emit a signal to the computer dashboard depending on the intensity of the damage. As soon as the driver starts the car, the computer dashboard system shows a warning red light, and then displays a video of 10 seconds of the shock within the display unit. Additionally, after using the collected data, the project initial cost was estimated to 1575 USD (14175 MAD). We found that the initial cost of the components is low in contrast with the long term benefit that the IPS would offer to drivers, thus it can be implemented even in economic cars. Cost effective on a number of vehicles, intelligent parking systems offer significantly improved services to the customer.

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TABLE I.
Components Type

COST ANALYSIS FOR IPS.

Description
Quantity

[9]
Price ($)

Ultrasonic sensors

Parallax's PING))) DT104 buzzer Model No: BB -03V-2 Xenos XCTXRM-0900 Visual Display Unit

-Perform measurements between moving and stationary object -High quality and easy to install. -LED Block Light -Display size 9 inches -Power supply : 12V DC -Controls all the sensors and uses their outputs to calculate the parking space. -Front and Rear view -lighter powered -GPS map -record accident with picture

[10] 2 60

[11] [12]

Buzzer Unit

69 [13] [14]

Display Unit

700

[15]

[16] 1 12 [17] [18] 2 734 [19]

Microcontroller

PIC 16F877A

CarCamera Shock Sensor

Dual camera vehicle black box GPSLogger

[20] 1575 (14175 MAD)

Total Cost

[21] [22]

Kianpisheh, N. Mustaffa and P. Keikhosrokiani, Smart Parking System (SPS) Architecture Using Ultrasonic Detector, International Journal of Software Engineering and Its Applications Vol. 6, No. 3,pp. 55-58, Jul. 2012. T.Jamil, Design and Implementation of a Parking Helper, Proceedings of the World Congress on Engineering and Computer Science, Vol. I, Oct. 2009. T.Van Roon, 7-Segment Displays, Oct.2010 H. Tsung-hua , L. Jing-Fu, Y. Pen-Ning, L. Wang-Shuan and H. Jia-Sing, Development of an Automatic Parking Systemfor Vehicle, IEEE Vehicle Power and Propulsion Conference (VPPC), Sep. 2008. M. Keller, How conventional Parking Sensor System work, 2009. R. Bannatyne, Microcontrollers for Automobile, Micro Control Journal, 2009. Z.F.Zhu, Y.Zhao, and H.Q.Lu, Sequential architecture for efficient car detection, IEEE Computer Society Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition, pp. 1-8, 2007. S. Funck, N. Mohler, and W. Oertel, Determining car-park occupancy from single images, in Proceedings of International Symposium on Intelligent Vehicles, Vol. 4, pp. 325328, 2004. T. Harris, Car-alarm shock sensors, 2011. Parallax Industry group, PING))) Ultrasonic Distance Sensor, Parallax Portal, 2012. MicroController Pros Corporation, PIC16F877A-I/P Microcontroller, 2012. <URL:http://microcontrollershop.com/product_info.php?products _id=992>. Car Wale Industry, Xenos XCT-XRM-0900 LED, 2012. <URL:http://www.carwale.com/accessories/items/xenosxctxrm09 00visualdisplayunit-1202.html>. Reverse Back Up Systems Industry, DT104 Basic Backup Sensor, 2012. Dual Camera Industry, Dual Camera Vehicle Blackbox GPS Logger With G Sensor Recorder And Audio, 2012.

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