Not a fun
activity. On your typical Saturday afternoon, when most people are in the
malls, it is difficult to determine which of the lots you should enter.
Do you gamble that people have left the one closest to the entrance, or are
you a pessimist and drive to the most remote lot right away ? At any rate,
people leave lots all the time, and you cannot find this out unless you cruise
through the lots. You cannot tell from even a row entrance what the availability
of slots is. Isn't it fun to accelerate toward an empty spot only to discover
that it is filled by a compact car so short that the spot seemed empty ?
As multiple cars go into cruising mode, congestion happens inside the parking
lot. Cars backing out of their spots halt other cars trying to depart, and
people obstruct lanes. Drivers need to be able to decide before entering
whether this is the lot they want to park in, but how can we give
them the information? We propose not a simple video image shot from above,
but rather a machine vision enhanced image of the lot. The task of recognizing
vehicles in an otherwise fixed environment is within the capacity range of
current, cheap neural networks. Note: the price of LCD screens collapses
on a weekly basis, and soon fixed screens will be replaced by flexible plastic
material. Look at the "spot-a-lot" display below. It is a computer enhanced
image of the parking lot: The computer tracks the "history" of the cars,
it can distinguish between an entering and a departing vehicle, which you
could not, having just arrived at the screen. So, the computer presents cars
that have entered in blue, filled spots in red, empty spots in green, and
departing cars in yellow. So as you drive by the lot below, you can see instantly:
Only two slots available, and they will be filled before you get there. So who is going to pay for this ? If you vote for the Hallitube referendum, 50% will be paid by the state, the other by the (large) mall. And remember, the computer program has to be written only once. And as of May 2005, 17 inch screens went to $ 177. Soon plastic foil displays will become available, and then costs drop even more.
bravenet.com