Self-parking cars are starting to seem less pie-in-the-sky and more of an imminent reality BMW’s turn to dispatch a car on a staged round-trip expedition through a multilevel parking lot to an open parking spot and back to demonstrate its Remote Valet Parking Assistance system. the BMW i3 research vehicle to be shown at CES is controlled via a smart watch and combines information from a quartet of laser sensors and the digital site plan of a building to drive independently through various levels of the garage in search of a parking spot, Once at the spot, the car parks and locks itself and waits to be fetched by the smart-watch wearer. It then calculates how long it will take for the driver to return to the place where he or she left the car, and times its arrival accordingly, barring any unexpected blockade of cars behind an actual driver waiting for a spot to open up after some family to piles into their minivan. The basic idea is that a driver can enter a multi-story and then leave their vehicle, safe in the knowledge that it will navigate the building, find a space, park up and lock itself without running anyone over or hitting any pillars. The aim is to save individuals the time and effort of having to do all that themselves, giving them a head-start on their shopping trip in the meantime.

Car self parking

Trawling a multi-story car-park and then squeezing into a parking space can be a painstaking task. It would be much better if you could just drive into a car-park and leave your vehicle to do the rest. Well, that's exactly what BMW says its Remote Valet Parking system will let you do.

The system can be triggered by an app on a smartwatch, or presumably potentially by another device. Once the driver has exited the vehicle, they can send their vehicle on its way and leave it to its own devices. BMW says it's also possible for the driver to "call" their vehicle when they are on their way back to the car-park. Once notified, the system will work out how long the individual will be, before starting the car, re-navigating the car-park and meeting the driver back at a predefined point.

How it works

An automatic parking system uses various methods to detect objects around the vehicle. Sensors installed on the front and rear bumpers can act as both a transmitter and a receiver. These sensors send a signal that will be reflected back when it encounters an obstacle near the vehicle. Then, the capture will use the time signal it receives to determine the position of the obstacle. Other systems mounted on the bumper use the camera or radar to detect obstacles.But the result is the same: the car will detect the parking space size and distance from the roadside, then drive the car into the parking space.

Laser rangefinder

A laser rangefinder is a rangefinder which uses a laser beam to determine the distance to an object. The most common form of laser rangefinder operates on the time of flight principle by sending a laser pulse in a narrow beam towards the object and measuring the time taken by the pulse to be reflected off the target and returned to the sender. Due to the high speed of light, this technique is not appropriate for high precision sub-millimeter measurements, where triangulation and other techniques are often used.

Range

Despite the beam being narrow, it will eventually spread over long distances due to the divergence of the laser beam, as well as due to scintillation and beam wander effects, caused by the presence of air bubbles in the air acting as lenses ranging in size from microscopic to roughly half the height of the laser beam's path above the earth.

These atmospheric distoritions coupled with the divergence of the laser itself and with transverse winds that serve to push the atomspheric heat bubbles laterally may combine to make it difficult to get an accurate reading of the distance of an object, say, beneath some trees or behind bushes, or even over long distances of more than 1 km in open and unobscured desert terrain Some of the laser light might reflect off leaves or branches which are closer than the object, giving an early return and a reading which is too low. Alternatively, over distances longer than 1200 ft (365 m), the target, if in proximity to the earth, may simply vanish into a mirage, caused by temperature gradients in the air in proximity to the heated surface bending the laser light. All these effects have to be taken into account.

Technologies

Time of flight

This measures the time taken for a light pulse to travel to the target and back. With the speed of light known, and an accurate measurement of the time taken, the distance can be calculated. Many pulses are fired sequentially and the average response is most commonly used. This technique requires very accurate sub nanosecond timing circuitry.

Omniview technology

Omniview technology (also known as "surround view" or "bird view technology") is a vehical technology that became available in vehicle electronic products since around 2005. It is designed to help drivers in parking a vehicle in small space.

Principle

Early vehicle parking assistant products user radar or a single rear view camera to get information about obstacles around, and provide drivers with sound alarm or rear-view video. There are some drawbacks about such products: the alarm is not intuitive, and the rear-view camera has blind area. However, omniview technology overcomes these problems and has seen increasing applications

In a common omniview system, there are four wide-field cameras: one in the front of the vehicle, one in the back of the vehicle, one in the left rear view mirror, and one in the right outside mirror. The four cameras cover the whole area around vehicle. The system synthesizes a bird view image in front of the vehicle by distortion correction, projection transformation, and image fusion The images shown below are input and output of a common omniview product

Advanced Driver Assistance Systems

Advanced Driver Assistance Systems, or ADAS, are systems to help the driver in the driving process. When designed with a safe Human-Machine Interface, they should increase car safety and more generally road safety.

Advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) are systems developed to automate/adapt/enhance vehicle systems for safety and better driving. Safety features are designed to avoid collisions and accidents by offering technologies that alert the driver to potential problems, or to avoid collisions by implementing safeguards and taking over control

Parking sensors

Parking sensors are proximity sensors for road vehicles designed to alert the driver to obstacles while parking. These systems, which use either electromagnetic or ultrasonic sensors, are marketed variously by vehicle manufacturers under proprietary brand names such as Park Distance Control, Park Assist, Parktronic or EPS.

Ultrasonic systems

These systems feature ultrasonic proximity detectors to measure the distances to nearby objects via sensors located in the front and/or rear bumper fascias or visually minimized within adjacent grills or recesses.

The sensors emit acoustic pulses, with a control unit measuring the return interval of each reflected signal and calculating object distances.The system in turns warns the driver with acoustic tones, the frequency indicating object distance, with faster tones indicating closer proximity and a continuous tone indicating a minimal pre-defined distance. Systems may also include visual aids, such as LED or LCD readouts to indicate object distance. A vehicle may include a vehicle pictogram on the car's infotainment screen, with a representation of the nearby objects as coloured blocks.

Advantages

The advantages of Autonomous car are numerous and include:

 The lack of human error whilst driving, will result in a much safer journey

 Due to the sensors on the Autonomous car, they will be able to pack closer together allowing more cars on the road and therefore shorting traffic times ,

· Disabilities would no longer be a factor in driving, meaning anyone could drive

 You would need less space for parking as well as the car would be able to drop you off and then find a parking space further away.

 There would be no need to pass a driving test or gain a driving license as everyone would be able to drive.

Disadvantages

However, there are still some disadvantages of Autonomous cars:

 There will always be the worry of the computer crashing or malfunctioning,

 The lack of need for drivers would be catastrophic for the economy;

 When they are first released, they are likely to be extremely expensive, and Therefore most people won’t be able to afford them.

 Driving enthusiasts may not find the concept of self-driving car appealing, and Therefore will most likely want to keep normal cars