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.