Tomorrow, Today.
Abstract
The Self Parking Car System
For this senior design project, we are creating a self-parking car that we call SELFIE. SELFIE will be able to automate the parking process for multiple scenarios such as perpendicular, parallel, and garage parking. The motivation behind SELFIE is that both of us felt that in 2018 every car should have the ability to self-park, reliably, because there is no financial reason, with SELFIE, why this technology cannot be deployed to every car. We feel, overall, if we can develop a cost effective multi self-parking solution we could possible scale it to be installed, cost effectively, into new economy cars. SELFIE could be an asset to drivers that are unsure of their parallel parking abilities and to people with disabilities who have limited range of motion, in turn making parking lots safer due to helping prevent common fender benders.
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SELFIE is designed with an acrylic chassis that utilizes an Arduino Mega to connect and control the sensors utilizing C programming. The main equipment SELFIE will utilize will be multiple ultrasonic sensors (for range determination), color sensors (for parking line determination), DC motors to spin the whiles, a stepper motor for precise speed control, a Motor Shield for servo motor control, a lithium ion battery to provide power to all the required parts, and a Bluetooth module that will connect with an Android phone to select each of the parking scenarios.
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The logic behind SELFIE required over three months work of programming, with a little added each day. The overall program consists of nine functions and over 1,600 lines of code. SELFIE has been a success due to having average parking reliability of 86% in all three parking scenarios.
Motivation
Like most used equipment in our daily life the technology that surrounds us has become smarter. By smarter it means items that we normally use such as our watches, phones, thermostats, and doorbells have been made to not only perform the tasks they have done in the past, but also perform other sub tasks that make our daily lives more safe, convenient, or efficient.
Cars are one of the last things that have yet to fully become “smart”. Ideally a fully smart car would have all the luxuries of today, but also be able to drive and park itself without user input. This is something that a lot of car manufactures have partially completed. There are several companies that offer parallel parking, however they are generally for luxury or high-priced cars, and they do not offer parking in situations other than parallel parking.
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Today we are developing a self-parking car system. A system that can park itself in multiple situations that common drivers encounter. This, in a small part, will help cars become fully smart and autonomous. Having a car that will park itself may not sound like a lot, but for someone with a family or a person with disabilities it will make their life just a little bit more convenient.
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The true motivation behind the self-parking technology, or what we call SELFIE, is to help any driver park their car, reliably. Imagine if you could stop your car in front of the garage, grab the groceries out of the trunk, or medical accessories, and then hit a button on your phone that opens the garage door and then your car parks for you. Another scenario to imagine is if you need to parallel park. If you have a disability which prevents excessive head motion it can be difficult to parallel park, imagine just pressing a button, a having your car first gauge if it is possible to parallel park, then park for you. The last scenario you need to imagine is if a driver would like to park their car, back first, into parking space in an area that has heavy traffic, such as a grocery store’s parking lot. Parking in reverse allows the driver to exit the parking spot safely and easily.
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With a car that can autonomously parallel park, reverse park, and park into a garage it helps prevent parking accidents and helps people that do not feel confident in their parking ability. With this technology it can be implemented with self-driving cars which will bring the automobile one step closer to a fully autonomous car for consumer usage.
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