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Ford Sensors to Map Parking Lots and Inform Other Cars of Empty Spaces

On average, says Ford, drivers waste a day per year looking for a parking space. Add to that the days spent blocked in traffic, and you get a sizeable amount of time going down the drain.
Ford works on parking mapping tech 1 photo
Photo: Ford
Having a realtime map of empty parking spaces might be just what the doctor prescribed. And mapping parking lots might not be as complicated as it might seem at first.

There are more and more cars out there fitted with parking or proximity sensors. These sensors, says Ford, can do more than alert the drivers when they’ve reached the end of the allocated parking space. They can be used to map the lot, and even relay that information to other cars, so that they could go for the bullseye.

The idea is to have this sort of information available through crowd-sourcing. Sure, one driver, the first to reach the parking lot, will have to sacrifice himself and go around the lot scanning, before settling for an empty spot. But that’s the whole point of having a crowd-sourced map. On another occasion, the said driver would benefit from another driver's sacrifice.

Ford calls this collaborative parking. The information gathered by vehicles is shared with other cars, but with infrastructure as well, so that it could be picked up not only by Ford vehicles, but by most makes capable of car-to-infrastructure communication.

Data is sent to a map shown on screens of cars, alerting the driver by red and green colors which spaces may be free.

“We understand how much wasted time, and unnecessary stress is caused by searching for parking spaces in towns and cities,” said Christian Ress from Ford Research and Advanced Engineering.

“With our research into ‘collaborative parking,’ we see an opportunity to hand that time back to drivers, helping them enjoy happier, healthier and more efficient journeys.”

Ford's research is part of a UK government-funded project called Autodrive. Its 20 million pounds goal is to develop  self-driving and connected-car technologies.

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About the author: Daniel Patrascu
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Daniel loves writing (or so he claims), and he uses this skill to offer readers a "behind the scenes" look at the automotive industry. He also enjoys talking about space exploration and robots, because in his view the only way forward for humanity is away from this planet, in metal bodies.
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