16188 results about "Parking space" patented technology

The present invention provides a terminal, apparatus and method for providing a customized auto-valet parking service. The server device includes a service registration management unit for receiving auto-valet parking profile information that includes information about one or more of a user, a vehicle, and a mobile terminal, and a parking map management unit for generating customized parking slots suitable for the user using the auto-valet parking profile information, and providing a parking area map, which includes information about the customized parking slots, to the mobile terminal. The parking map management unit receives information about a final slot selected by the user from among the customized parking slots via the mobile terminal, and provides a route to the final slot.

Provided are a system and a method for auto valet parking. In the system and method, a parking slot of a target vehicle among a plurality of slots formed in a parking place is determined based on situation information on the parking place and a movement path based on information on current location of the target vehicle and information on the parking slot is determined. The target vehicle is automatically parked in the determined parking slot by moving along the movement path.

A dynamic parking management system and method includes use of an intelligent software engine that, in some embodiments, interfaces with a wireless mesh network and multi-channel communication devices that, as a system, increases customer convenience which maximizes return on parking resources. The present invention uses a parking transceiver mesh network node located proximate to one or more parking spaces to provide accurate and current data to a database of available parking assets. Parking availability algorithms are used to analyze this data to select optimal parking spaces for subscribers / drivers and predict future availability of parking spaces. Additional functionality comes from the parking transceiver's ability to recognize specific vehicles and specific customers with predefined requirements.

A vehicle parking spot locator system and method are provided. The system includes a database storing data pertaining to the parking spot locations including available parking spot locations, and a communication link for communicating with a vehicle and other sources. The communication link receives parking spot location information including information pertaining to availability of parking spot locations and further provides vehicles with parking spot location information to assist in locating a parking spot location. The system further includes a processor for processing the stored data in the database and providing parking spot location information to vehicles. The processor is configured to predict which open parking spot is closest to a desired destination and will be available when the vehicle arrives at the desired destination.

A parking guidance system tracks available parking spaces and leads users to vacant spots through display boards placed at strategic locations in the parking lot. Sensor nodes are deployed at parking spaces or within traffic lanes to monitor parking space occupancy and wirelessly transmit this information. The sensor nodes form a wireless network that routes the knowledge of available spaces to the corresponding display boards and updates them in real time. Parking availability information may also be shared with users in a variety of other ways such as through the Internet, personal digital assistants, computers, mobile telephones, in-vehicle dashboards, and others.

A method and apparatus for determining the availability of a plurality of parking spaces and of reserving one or more of such available parking spaces is disclosed. The method comprises the steps of accepting data indicating an occupancy status of at least a subset of the plurality of parking spaces; generating a parking database describing an availability of one or more of the parking spaces from the accepted data; accepting a request from a user, the request being for data describing the availability of the one or more of the parking spaces from the parking database; and providing the data describing availability of the one or more of the parking spaces to the user.

A parking policy management system helps identify and enforce parking violations in real-time. By monitoring sensors distributed in a parking area, the system will determine whether one or more parking policies have been violated. The types of parking policies the system can monitor include duration, time of day, unauthorized vehicle, special permit parking, and paid parking. When a violation of a policy is detected, a notification may be delivered to enforcement personnel through the Internet, personal digital assistants (PDAs), cell phones, in-vehicle dashboards, and other means.

To manage a plurality of parking spaces, one or more images are acquired, with each parking space appearing in at least one image. Periodically acquired images of occupancy and identity are used in directing a customer to a parked vehicle. Periodically acquired images of just occupancy are used in controlling respective environment aspects, such as illumination and ventilation, of the parking spaces. For these purposed, the images are classified automatically as “vacant” or “occupied”, and are displayed along with their classifications so that the classifications can be corrected manually.

A method for identifying available parking spaces. The method includes receiving data about a parking space from a vehicle, the data including a geographic indicator associated with the parking space. The data is stored in a database of available parking spaces. A geographic location is received from a parking space requestor. The database is searched for an available parking space within a proximity of the geographic location. If an available parking space within a proximity of the geographic location is located in the database, a geographic indicator associated with the available parking space is transmitted to the parking space requester.

The system described is an integrated parking management system which makes use of patented vehicle detectors to collect and transmit data, essentially in near real time, as to all events happening as to single or multiple parking spaces (e.g. current and historic use, length of time of occupancy of current occupant) to a central clearing device for which patent application has been made which serves as a logic core and repository, making use of proprietary software, analyzing, displaying and distributing the data so developed as to a parking plant and all of its components to allow all parties (including prospective users) who are concerned with the various aspects of a parking plant and its components (e.g. determination as to availability of spaces, maintenance and repair of meters, collection of revenues and enforcement of parking regulations) not only to access and make passive use of the information developed, in near real time, to permit them to identify what's happening to the plant and its components as to their own particular interest in such plant and so maximize the efficient use both of the resources of the plant and their own resources directed to the particular aspect of their interface with the plant and its components but also to access and make active use of such information for whatever purpose and in whatever fashion using whatever means of access they may wish. While others have made claim to certain of the individual functions described, e.g. vehicle detection, nobody has identified or patented

An integrated parking meter system automates the issuance of parking citations. Each parking meter will be equipped with a sonar range finder, mercury type switch and a two way radio that communicates via N-PCS to a host computer back at the control center. When a meter runs out of money it checks to see if a vehicle is present in the parking space. If it is, the meter notifies the host computer that there is a car illegally parked in the space. The host computer correlates the information to identify the exact location of the violator. The host computer then sends this information via wireless network to the parking meter attendants' personal communicator. The parking attendant proceeds to the violator and issues the citation. Included within this technology is the capability to remotely change the rate structure of any or all electronic parking meters. A meter diagnostic feature alerts repair personnel to specific malfunctioning meters. The meter may also set the time remaining on the meter to zero whenever a car leaves the adjacent space.

The present disclosure relates to a device and a method for self-automated parking lots for autonomous vehicles based on vehicular networking, advantageous in reducing parking movements and space. It is described a device for self-automated parking lot for autonomous vehicles based on vehicular networking, comprising: a vehicle electronic module for receiving, executing and reporting vehicle movements, a parking lot controller for managing and coordinating a group of vehicles in parking and unparking maneuvers, the vehicle module and controller comprising a vehicular ad hoc networking communication system. It is also described a method comprising moving autonomously in platoon one or more rows of already parked vehicles in order to make available a parking space for a vehicle arriving to the parking space; and moving autonomously in platoon one or more rows of parked vehicles in order to make a parked vehicle able to exit the parking space.

The parking detection system method described herein could guide people around urban environments, detect guide and navigate them to empty parking spaces, add-on to the car-based navigation systems that are popular today and or to the portable phone. We have focused on the task of detecting and navigating even in situations in which Global Positioning Systems (GPS) cannot provide this information, such as when the person is indoors or in crowded urban areas where there is no line of site to the GPS satellites. The parking information will be received directly from RF sensors and will display as a floating overlay on the existing cellular phone as Bluetooth application making the cellular phone a parking detector.

The systems described herein include one or more wireless vehicle detectors, along with a distributed parking payment system such as parking meters or a paystation. Information from the payment system and the vehicle detectors may be combined to determine when a parking violation occurs, or is about to occur. This information may then be transmitted through a communication system to a parking enforcement officer, along with information about the geographic location of the violation. The information may also, or instead be transmitted to a parking payer to notify the payer of an impending infraction so that the payer may purchase additional parking time before the violation.

Parking meters detect presence of vehicles in monitored parking spaces and obtain images of license plates. A parking enforcement system communicates with the parking meters and manages use of parking spaces.

The present invention relates to a ‘smart parking system’ comprising of 1) ‘smart parking meter’ containing a radiofrequency reader (RF reader); 2) radiofrequency tag (RF tag) containing vehicle identification information, that is mounted on vehicles; 3) a central control station communicating with a multitude of ‘smart parking meters’ to form a network; 4) the said central control station having a central computer system programmed with parking enforcement instructions. RF reader is provided with means to interrogate the RF tag of a vehicle parked in the corresponding parking stall; and transmit information obtained thereby to a central control station. The central control station has means to identify the said vehicle and determine whether or not the said vehicle is legally parked. If a parking violation is detected, the central computer system remotely instructs the corresponding ‘smart parking meter’ to issue a parking ticket. Means are also provided in the ‘smart parking system’ to determine if a vehicle parked in a parking stall has previous unpaid parking tickets. The ‘smart parking system’ also has means to determine if a vehicle wanted by law enforcement personnel is present in a parking stall within its network. According to yet another aspect, the ‘smart parking system’ has means to determine if a parking stall in its network is vacant and to reserve the said vacant stall for an authorized driver. Further, means are provided in the ‘smart parking meter’ to accept multiple forms of payment.

Systems and methods of directing parking in a parking lot include: (a) detecting the presence and / or absence of a vehicle in respective parking spaces in a parking lot having a plurality of parking spaces to monitor the availability of parking spaces; (b) identifying the space location of parking spaces that are available for use based on the detecting and monitoring steps; and (c) automatically providing the location of the identified available spaces to prospective users in substantially real-time.

A device for detecting parking spaces for vehicles includes a distance-measuring beam-type sensor system disposed on a road vehicle, and a signal processing system. The distance-measuring beam-type sensor system directs a measuring beam into an area in front of the vehicle so as to detect free areas in the traffic space that are potential parking spaces. The signal processing unit examines, upon a detecting of a free area, the dimensions of the free area and the suitability of the free area for parking.

Apparatus and methods related providing city services, such as parking, are described. A mobile device can be configured to receive information from local sensor nodes, such as parking sensor nodes, in the vicinity of the mobile device. In a parking application, the mobile device located in a moving vehicle can be configured to locate available parking based upon the information received from the parking sensor nodes. In other embodiments, the mobile device can be utilized in a retail establishment in conjunction with a remote server to display eye-level image data taken at various locations throughout the retail establishment. The eye-level image data can include products displayed throughout the retail establishment and can be augmented with one or more indicators that indicate product placement locations associated with the products.

A system for monitoring and tracking vehicles in parking locations, public roadways and highway entrances and exits and other public vehicle access areas is provided, such as to monitor and track vehicles in parking spaces, public roadways and highways without the need for parking or traffic personnel. The system includes a meter system that generates image data of a vehicle in a parking space, public roadway and highway entrances and exits such as by creating an array of pixel data in a predetermined field of view that includes a vehicle identification tag and facial imaging. An enforcement and tracking system receives the image data and generates a vehicle license number, vehicle tag identification number and facial image from the image data, such as by analyzing the image data to identify the vehicle license number, vehicle tag identification number and facial image based on the expected location of the license tag, identification tag and field of view image data characteristics of the license tag, facial image or other suitable data. From the image data acquired, monitoring of parking spaces is performed and violation citations or notices are generated for errant vehicles in parking locations as well as notification to law enforcement and homeland security agencies of vehicles and facial images identified as being on a watch list.

Vehicles operation is often regulated by vehicle operation policies, such as operator and vehicle licensing, safe operation rules, and emissions testing, as well as advisory policies (e.g., safety tips) and infrastructure policies (e.g., traffic congestion reduction). However, enforcement of vehicle operation policies may be infrequent, costly, inaccurate, and / or ineffective for particular types of problems. Presented herein are techniques for enforcing vehicle operation policies using vehicle telemetrics detected by a vehicle telemetry sensor and reported to telemetric monitoring components during operation of the vehicles. For example, in-car emissions sensors may regularly report emissions data to roadside monitors, enabling continuous monitoring, early detection of emissions problems, and accurate measurements during road travel. Additional telemetric exchange may promote the persuasion of advisory vehicle operation policies, such as safety tips, and the transmission of travel information of interest to other vehicles and individuals, such as road hazards, traffic congestion, and available parking spots.

A monocular motion stereo-based automatic free parking space detection system is disclosed. The system acquires image sequences with a single rearview fisheye camera, three-dimensionally reconstructs the vehicle rearview by using point correspondences, and recovers metric information from a known camera height to estimate the positions of adjacent vehicles thereby detecting the free parking spaces. By using de-rotation-based feature selection and 3D structure mosaicking the degradation of the 3D structure near the epipole is solved and it is not necessary to use the unreliable odometry due to its accuracy depending on road conditions.

The invention discloses a real-time road condition acquiring, analyzing and back-feeding and intelligent transportation integrated service system, which is divided into two parts of an intelligent terminal host and a server-side server farm. The intelligent terminal host consists of electronic map application, GPS receiving, p2p data transmission, navigation, voice control, general message checking and a communication module; the server-side server farm consists of vehicle information and public TMC receiving, data integration and filtration, road condition analysis, road condition forecast, electronic map management and maintenance, dynamic information prompt, advertising publishing, data feedback and publishing, a server-side data base, parking space information collection and treatment, road section codes, road condition codes, road planning analog and a communication module. The invention has wide road condition information acquisition source, strong data handling capacity, can carry out highly-accurate real-time road condition analysis, road condition information forecast, path planning navigation, information inquiry and the like, and can be widely applied in the fields of road planning, intelligent traffic management, vehicle navigation, car scheduling and the like.

Provided are an intelligent parking guidance apparatus and method. The intelligent parking guidance apparatus includes: an image sensor node recognizing a vehicle number of a vehicle, sensor nodes determining whether the vehicle exists in their own positions, a parking management server generating information for guiding the vehicle to an available parking space, and a mobile communication terminal receiving the information. The intelligent parking guidance apparatus and method provide information regarding parking lots which are within a predetermined distance from a destination and available parking spaces of each parking lot, to a driver, as well as provide a road guidance service to the driver to guide his / her vehicle to the destination, so that the driver can select an optimal parking lot. Also, when the vehicle enters the parking lot, the intelligent parking guidance apparatus and method guide the driver to an available empty parking space, thereby reducing difficulties in finding a parking space in a place which is unfamiliar to the driver.

Parking guidance is provided to a user of a mobile device requesting information on parking spots at a requested location for a requested time. In response to receiving a parking information request, parking spots having locations proximate to the requested location and having availability at the requested time are identified in a database of parking spot information of a parking management server. A notification of the identified parking spots is transmitted to the user device from which the information request was received. In response to receiving a reservation request identifying a parking spot to be reserved from the user device, the database is updated to identify the identified parking spot as being unavailable at the requested time. Additionally, a notification of the reservation request is transmitted to a parking manager associated with the identified parking spot, the notification identifying the particular parking spot and the requested time.

An Automated Electric Vehicle Charging Station is disclosed. The Charging Station should can automatically connect to an electrically-powered vehicle and commence the recharging process. The charging process involves the charging station discovering and locating the vehicle's charging port. Once discovered and located, the charging station can reach out and make the electrical interconnection with the vehicle while the vehicle is located at an adjacent parking space. The charging station is retrofittable into an existing parking lot, in addition to its being a part of the original lot construction. A companion software application on a computing device such as a mobile phone may be used to activate and monitor the charging process, amd locating charging stations and providing customer billing status. Docking between the charging station robotic arm and the vehicle can be facilitated by a variety of locating / handshaking methods, including wireless signalling, video camera and infrared triangulation, for example.

The invention relates to an automatic parking system. The automatic parking system comprises an environment acquisition sensor used for detecting the surrounding environment of a vehicle, and sending the acquired data to a central processing unit, a human-computer interaction unit used for providing an interface for observing the surrounding environment information of the vehicle and interacting with the system by a driver, the central processing unit used for creating a parking environment map according to the received surrounding environment data of the vehicle and sending the parking environment map to the human-computer interaction unit, planning an expected parking path according to the received parking space selection information of the driver, the acquired actual position information of the vehicle and the parking environment map and sending the expected parking path to a bottom-layer control module, and the bottom-layer control module used for triggering the vehicle to carry out a corresponding operation according to the expected parking path sent by the central processing unit, so as to finish parking. The fully-automatic parking technology disclosed by the invention solves the problems that a parking space is narrow and a common driver difficulty parks the vehicle in place, which are brought by an urbanization process, and has a re-planning capacity.

The present invention extends to methods, systems, and computer program products for navigating a customer to a parking space. A customer sends a request from a mobile device or vehicle navigation system for directions to a parking space in a store parking lot. A store computer receives the customer request along with parking requests from other customers. The store computer identifies appropriate candidate parking spaces utilizing camera systems, sensor systems, location of customer mobile devices, and point-of-sale (POS) activity. The store computer identifies the candidate spaces for each customer based on their proximity to the store and their parking preferences. The store computer transmits navigation instructions to parking spaces via the customer mobile devices and / or the vehicle navigation systems. The parking space is stored in the customer mobile device and is used by the customer upon exiting the store for navigation instructions back to the customer parking space.