Self-Parking Car Available In Japan

sinjayde writes "Yahoo!/Reuters is reporting that Toyota has released a car for sale in Japan that is able to park itself: 'Toyota's new hybrid gasoline-electric Prius sedan uses electrically operated power steering and sensors that help guide the car when reversing into parking spaces.'" No need to rely on the reverse parking formula anymore?

Comments

It had to be done...

[Anonymous Coward]

In Soviet Russia, car parks you!

Re:It had to be done...

[danila]

Unfortunately, in [Soviet] Russia the number of cars skyrocketed after the collapse of the USSR. This coincided with the unwillingness of Russians to pay parking tickets, which gave rise to parking in places where parking is illegal. The authorities tried a countermeasure - arresting a car and placing it in custody, but the courts ruled out that it's illegal (in Russia you can't deprive anyone of property without a court decision, not even a drug user/dealer). Still, Russians don't pay the tickets, so there is no way to stop rampant parking. The drivers park on the grass, in the flower-beds, in the playing ground, under the "No Parking" signs, around "No Parking" signs, near the firestation exits, on central city streets, everywhere. The ability of Prius to fit itself into the parking space would not be particularly useful for Russians, because they can just leave their car where they see fit. :)

P.S. This is true for St. Petersburg, situation may be slightly better in other cities.

hmm, not so sure....

[mut3]

you still gonna do some work here, since it only helps you back in. so, if you hit the car next to you, dont blame it on the car (like you normally do)!!

dependency

[djshake]

what happens when we forget how to park cars ourselves? technology is good, but people are getting too darn lazy these days. is parking really that hard? survey says: only for old people

Re:dependency

[Gogl]

And here's the irony: I agree with you that the only possible justified use of these sorts of driving-aid devices would be to help old people (although maybe I'm just callous because I generally think that if they're too old to drive they just shouldn't be driving), but only the young people will be willing to use them. Hell, I'm not even that old and I wouldn't trust some sort of auto-parking thing. Only people who are young when it comes out and grow up with it will be used to it and willing to use it themselves.

I bet it was the same thing with automatic transmission at first. A car changing gears on it's own, many of the people who were only used to manual probably didn't particularly want to make the switch. Some will switch, but the vast majority of the transition depends on time.

Or to make a long story short, new technology can take upwards of a generation to really assimilate into society. But you probably knew that anyway, I just felt like pointing that out as it seemed pertinent or something.

Re:dependency

[NanoGator]

"what happens when we forget how to park cars ourselves?"

Is it really all that likely? It's simply a navigation task, not some particular combination of voodoo prayer and the position of the moon. Calculators didn't kill the study of math, elevators didn't kill the climbing of stairs, and even if you made those arguments it's arguable that society has grown to a higher level since both these devices came along. So tell me, why would a self parking car make people forget how to park cars? That's a ridiculous, cliche filled, statement.

"but people are getting too darn lazy these days."

People are smarter than they ever were. They do a lot more these days than they did in the olden days. Lazy?

"is parking really that hard?"

If it were, dontcha think that these things would have been around ages ago? Back in the 50's they had a car with a fifth wheel so you could pivot your car into a paralell spot. Didn't exactly take off. However, technology has gotten a lot better these days, it's gotten cheaper, and car companies are in a competition to get more marketshare. What you're seeing here is a result of competition, not some need to park cars. Besides, have you ever had a valet driver bump your bumper? Happens to my car daily.

driving test.

[woodchip]

1. buy car that can park it self
2. sell driving lesson school for people who are afraid to parallel park on driving test. with the promise they can use car on the test.
3. ????
4. profit.

Re:driving test.

[bersl2]

sell driving lesson school for people who are afraid to parallel park on driving test. with the promise they can use car on the test.

In some states, it is no longer a requirement to know how to parallel park in order to get a license. Therefore, even though I've been driving for two years, I still can't parallel park.

Sad but true.

Re:driving test.

[cfallin]

In some states, it is no longer a requirement to know how to parallel park

True in Oregon - it's been replaced by parking and then backing along a curb (at least that's what my driving instructor said - I'm not 16 yet and so haven't taken the test).

Who pays?

[moehoward]

Will your insurance company pick it up if you (I mean it) damages another car?

In the US, these have to pass some rigorous gov't inspection and testing before they are allowed on the road. I don't think I want the liability.

Is parking really that hard? Are people really that stupid and lazy? Don't answer that. Can I get a robot to feed me my cereal in the morning?

Re:Who pays?

[EvilTwinSkippy]

The way liability insurance is structured, you pay regardless. Anyone, and by logical extension, anything you grant control of the car is covered by your policy.

I don't think you will have the option of recovering damages from the manufacturer. You ultimately pulled the switch that told the car to auto-park.

Re:Who pays?

[LetterJ]

This is why I don't think we'll see cars driving themselves in the U.S. any time soon. They've built the vehicles so they can handle the freeway without a driver (some documentary I saw). However, even if the rate of accidents with self-driving/parking vehicles is lower than with real drivers (and I'd tend to believe it could be) even 1 accident would launch liability lawsuits galore.

Re:Who pays?

[wonton_mein]

"even 1 accident would launch liability lawsuits galore."

In that case, the state can adopt a no-fault policy, thus eliminating frivolous lawsuits and those "middlemen".

Re:Who pays?

[wonton_mein]

The car is being sold in Japan, not the U.S. I agree in order to sell in the U.S., it must pass lots of inspections and testings. In hindsight, a reserved parking space in cities like Tokyo and Hong Kong can easily exceed that of insurance premiums, so lots of car owners resort to parking on the cheaper/metered parking spaces located on the streets. So a self-parking car can actually save them money (assuming the drivers have mediocre parallel-parking skill). Imagine waiting on a mediocre driver who's attempting to manually parallel park, on a busy street in Tokyo. Multiply that by N.

Re:Who pays?

[bfields]

However, even if the rate of accidents with self-driving/parking vehicles is lower than with real drivers (and I'd tend to believe it could be) even 1 accident would launch liability lawsuits galore.

Speaking from complete ignorance, just trying to think through the economics of this--if the self-driving system actually lead to less accidents, then in general you'd expect there to be less money overall awarded in liability lawsuits. The difference would just be who would be responsible--some liability that was previously the driver's would become the car manufacturer's. So you'd expect the automaker to end up spending more on liability insurance (raising the cost of the car), but you'd expect the car driver's liability insurance to decrease correspondingly.

The driver's insurer could say "buy this (more expensive, because of the technology and the costs of the maker's insurance) self-driving car and we'll give you a discount."

So naively it's not obvious that the increased liability on the automakers' part would make the whole project impossible.

Maybe an automated highway is more complicated than something like a self-parking mechanism, because many more parties are involved (e.g., the people who built and designed the highway), but still, if they could prove that there would be a decrease in accidents, then it might be possible to distribute the costs of risks in a reasonable way.

I sincerely doubt, however, that it is possible for anyone at this point to *know* that the accident rates will be lower. Without more experience, an automated highway sounds like a risky venture--it might initially seem to be safer, but then a subtle bug might cause something catastrophic to happen after it's been in use for a while. Perhaps it was the difficult-to-forsee problems that they were worried about in the situation you describe. But if the threat of suits here is encouraging caution, that strikes me as a good thing--surely radical changes affecting something as critical as highway safety *should* be undertaken very cautiously.

--Bruce Fields

Parking is easy

[EvilTwinSkippy]

Now find me a car that can FIND parking by itself. That I will pay money for.

Re:Parking is easy

[whiteranger99x]

Now find me a car that can FIND parking by itself. That I will pay money for.

Thats an easy enough solution...just get yourself a tank and parking problems will be a thing of the past ;)

Re:Parking is easy

[rmohr02]

Buy a UPS truck. You can park those things anywhere.

Re:Parking is easy

[pyros]

It's called a Canyonero.

Good for Toyota

[Ugodown]

I have been impressed with Toyota's tack record in terms of innovation. Energy friendly cars were just the beginning, now integrating technology like this into cars will really make them sell. A far cry from what is being done with American and European cars (exept for the energy part).

self merging cars,...

[epicstruggle]

what we now need are cars that merge onto highways for us. Just like how fighter planes take off without the need of pilot input. I dont think many drivers would go for a car that drives for them, but something that makes merging into fast/dangerous traffic would be greatly appreciated.

later,
epic

Re:self merging cars,...

[bfields]

what we now need are cars that merge onto highways for us.

Unfortunately merging is one of the maneuvers that requires the most communication; in busy traffic you really have to negotiate with the other people on the road--signal and move over a little, watch to see if the approaching driver acknowledges you, and then, depending on the reaction, either move over a little more or retreat and wait for the next gap.

Exactly the sort of procedure I'd imagine to be most difficult to automate....

--Bruce Fields

Obvious joke

[gilesjuk]

What happens when the system crashes? :)

BBC Story

[Arc04]

Here is the BBC's take on the same story.

The technology for this was shown off months ago - I saw the story. I am glad it is finally being released to the public.

Re:The article text to avoid /. effect:

[AdEbh]

Thanks for that. 'Cause you know Yahoo gets /.ed every time.

- ebh

Not new

[Anonymous Coward]

This is not new. I've seen a similar system nearly 12 years ago used by a handicapped photographer at my high school. His car was retrofitted with a very similar system that would park the car by itself.

I can't say I...

[bob670]

really enjoy driving anymore as it is, and with most major metros (and smaller metros as well) experiencing some level of gridlock, I drive as little as possible in areas where this would be of any real use. I know we are talking about a car company, but I would rather see this kind of effort go in to public transportation/mass transit.

Re:The real question

[EvilTwinSkippy]

How lazy CAN we get?

Robots to auto-post to Slashdot?

The forgotten danger

[menscher]

When backing into a space, your front end swings out a bit. So you have to watch for traffic approaching from behind before you do this. Does the car think to do that? No? Whoops.

bigger engine and motor

[evenprime]

I'm more impressed by the fact that the engine in the new prius is now 78 horsepower(it used to be 70 hp) and the motor is 50kW/67hp (it used to be 44 hp).

Toyota did the right thing. The new prius is bigger than the old one (now a midsize, not a compact), has fewer emissions, more horsepower, and accelerates faster. Now, if they could only make it cheaper, too....

cluster

[chochos]

I can imagine a Beowulf cluster of these. It must look exactly like rush hour.

importing one

[Sarin]

Be carefull if you want to import one, in Japan they drive on the left hand side.
I imagine when you try to autopark in a right hand side country it will park in the middle of the road instead of the sidewalk.

Better yet

[earthforce_1]

A car that continuously drives itself around the block, and avoids the need for parking. (Or parking tickets) Paying for the extra fuel is probabably cheaper that hourly parking in most major cities, and certainly would be in Japan.

obvious answer

[rootofevil]

then the rest of it crashes too, duh.

Interesting Idea

[ewhenn]

How about we adapt this technology so that it automatically detects if the parking spot is for a handicapt or not. If the owner parks illegally in one of these spots, the car backs the F$&K over them.

yes...

[holzp]

yes, but can it automatically flip the bird to that !@&#^$ who stole the spot from you, because is impolite car was made in the usa?

Wrong place for intelligence

[El]

What we need is a car that watches the driver, and says things link "You're drunk! I'm NOT starting!" and "Hang up the cellphone and pay attention to your driving!"

Re:Wrong place for intelligence

[mosch]

the first one exists.

Only in America

[Anonymous Coward]

If people ever actually think stuff like this is a good idea, we need to raise the tax on gasoline. No wonder we're so dependent on Middle Eastern oil.

highways and magnets

[doormat]

The freeway you're talking about is Interstate 15 near San Diego, CA. They built a single lane, multi-mile segment on the inside median, with magnets under the road every 100'. The car would be programed to follow the magnets and make course corrections. There were also ultrasonic sensors on the front and back. The demo had 3 cars at 100mph, 10' apart with the system engaged.

Re:highways and magnets

[numberthree]

The only problem with a road system that relies on magnets would be the construction required to implement it. Down the street from my house, they've been widening an intersection since before Summer began.

I think I read somewhere that in 1995, there were nearly 4 million miles of road total in the U.S.A. If it takes a transit team that long to widen one busy suburban intersection, we'll all be driving floating cars by the time they're finished. At least, we hope.

Re:highways and magnets

[drinkypoo]

That's a prototype, a solution which they could implement THEN. NOW, by using radio triangulation (GPS? Or more easily, something more local. RFID?) :) and inertial tracking (MEMS Accelerometers?) you could somewhat trivially design a car that drives itself, as long as all the other cars used the same system, which is to say they would respect the lanes of traffic, and not run into one another.

The only problem then becomes crap-in-the-road (or lack of a road) avoidance. However if you had traffic monitoring statistics collection and-or mesh-networked sharing of data (it's okay to be a star network) then cars can individually detect something in the road that they should not run over, or the fact that the road has been damaged, by using radar or sonar, and handle the situation. This will not work without ABS and is best-implemented using all wheel drive.

In fact, I just had a really great idea which I am an idiot to share unless I narrowly provide a "prior art" style musing that defeats some asinine patent; put RFID tags in all the road paint, on all the reflectors, etc. End up with an RFID tag every square inch or so in paint. Now use vehicles that drive along and scan them periodically. This will tell you everything you need to know about road geometry.

Obviously every road doesn't need this technology, just interstate highways. Then everyone's cars can go as fast as they want them to go (within reason) and they can cooperate on methods to do this.

I realize that I'm oversimplifying things a lot, and it would be easy and reasonable for any of you to say "Well then go do it and shut the fuck up" but come on, all of these are solved problems. You might not be able to do it economically today, but you certainly could do it, and make it safer than counting on people, who are unreliable. Sure a person might be able to make a judgement call like "I don't need to slow down to go around this dead dog, just go a foot onto the shoulder" and a car says "holy shit to go around this large thing I'd have to go onto the shoulder and I have no idea if that's safe!" So the car is going to nail the brakes (don't worry, it's ABS) and maybe even downshift a few times (if you got a tiptronic or similar) and pester you to go around it manually. This is a problem because your car can probably brake a lot faster than a person can, unless the person is in a car with better brakes, and is really on the ball, so this is why it's so important for ALL cars allowed on these roads to have the system. It's really not because we're afraid that the cars will do something wrong, you can solve that by making them slow down and/or stop rather than do something questionable. Take the unpredictable humans out of the equation and bang, you're done.

Of course, it might well be more intelligent to replace the freeways with some kind of trains, which cars are attached to. Maybe they could even switch cargoes while in motion, but that's unnecessary. Some kind of routing system (we all like dynamic routing) could handle the problem neatly. You'd pay less for travel when the queues were empty, of course. I personally think that this might be the best model. Maintain the interstates where they are major business corridors, which is to say that they're used all day, but pare them down some, and put all the long range traffic on trains.

Since that will never happen, let's start with the RFID tags in the roads. Anyone want to give me a big lump of capital? :)

Reminds me of a bad card I read

[zapp]

On the front was a picture of a woman trying to parallel park, crunching into all the cars around her. The title was "Why women can't drive..."

on the inside..

Because men will tell them this is 6 inches:
--> ==== <--

Needless to say it wasn't quite the punchline I was expecting :)

Re:Yuck

[ergo98]

"Enough of these rubbish do-dads that frankly, no good driver would ever need."

Traction control and anti-lock brakes both can accomplish feats that the best driver on the planet Earth couldn't accomplish, given that they are modulating their input thousands of times per second, absolutely optimizing power/braking and acceleration. They aren't necessities, and you could approximate them, but don't fool yourself into thinking that you could do a better job. If you claim otherwise, then I'd suggest that you should have relay wires installed in your dash to let you handle the spark timing yourself as well.

Where technology has just finally offered a better choice is in transmissions: Until recently the "standard" was always the superior driving choice, as the automatic options were hydraulic circuitry turds often with 3 gears. Now there are continuously variable automatic transmissions that achieve the absolute perfect coupling between power plant and road surface all of the time. Alternately the computer controlled 5 or 6 speed automatics are quite extraordinary now as well.

Re:Yuck

[csimicah]

These days, cars are so complex that to even think about servicing one, you need a Ph.D.

I hear people say this, and I wonder if they've ever even seen a modern engine.

Granted, I can't fix a broken engine computer. Luckily, engine computers are solid state devices that almost never break. Other than that, what can't you fix about a new car? You can still change water pumps, do brake pads and rotors, change clutches, replace power steering pumps, alternators, ball joints, etc, etc, etc, same things you would have done on a 60's car.

Of course, instead of rebuilding a carb, you swap out an injector, though I've never had one go bad. And instead of doing timing/replacing points/caps/etc., you do... nothing. Other than some past VW and GM design flaws, solid state electronic ignitions don't tend to go bad, being solid state.

Re:Yuck

[be-fan]

A solution would be to just cull all the teenagers :)

Seriously, though, I think the driving tests need to be 10x harder. If half the people failed them, the roads would be a whole lot safer and more pleasent.

how great an idea that would be.

[YllabianBitPipe]

come up with a way to put gps devices in parking meters that kick in when the space is empty. then anyone in a car with a gps unit can see where they are.

How stunt drivers do it

[Anonymous Coward]

Get front wheel drive manual car with a very very good handbrake.

Head towards the parking spot at a fair speed, as perpendicular to the spot as you can. Swerve car and pull handbrake and then brake and counter steer so that you neatly skid and slide in sideways.

With this method you can park in a spot that's practically the same length as your car - just depends on how accurate you are.

Getting out requires a bit more space - the length of the space must be slightly more than the diagonal length of your car. Pull handbrake to max, turn steering wheel max (to lock) towards side you want to exit from. Stomp on clutch, red line engine, release clutch, burn rubber and gradually spin car out of space.

Not recommended in uncontrolled environments.

Re:How stunt drivers do it

[sanx]

I believe the world record for parking in a space using this method was done by a British stunt driver (forget his name) who managed to handbrake into a space 17cm longer than the car itself and stop with both wheels within 10cm of the kerb. It took his about four tries to do this.

The stunt driver in question made his name doing the same stunt in TV ads for the Austin Montego car - a car so truly f'ing awful that it deserved to be confined to the great car crusher in the sky upon launch.

Re:I won't give up Stick!

[aashenfe]

Unless my next car has a CVT. The Toyota Prius is actualy looking pretty goot at this point.
Why are Ford and GM so far behind? They don't have CVT's. They are just talking about Hybrids, I'm not holding my breath.
Toyota and Honda have had Hybrid's and CVT transmisions for years now.

Re:Sounds good

[NanoGator]

"But can it run Linux? sorry, I had to :) "

It can, but nobody wants to type man headlts.

Re:I won't give up Stick!

[HTMLSpinnr]

It's not a true CVT, but an E-CVT, because there are no varying gear ratios to change torque multiplication. The car has one single speed and engine torque output to the wheels is varied by resistance on an electric generator. This is driven through a pretty slick planetary gearset which gets the job done. Gobs of electric motor torque takes care of slow speed starts so that the car performs somewhat like an ordinary car.

I know. I own a 2002 Prius, and have ordered the 2004 (too bad they don't have self parking here in the States).

Go see the article on How Hybrids Work at howstuffworks.com

Glad to see they put this in a hybird car.

[ModernGeek]

I love the Hybrid car philosophy, it is a step away from gas-guzzling SUV's. This is a great incentive for people to buy a Prius over another car too, and the body on the new models look alot better than the older ones. My friends dad has a Prius, and it drives fast, and it rides ALOT more smooth than a traditional car. I just don't know why this idea was never embrassed before. Also, how come we don't have cars that can drive themself on the interstate? It doesn't seem like it would be hard at all, since they could just implement sensors into an interstate quite simply since it is all managed by the government, an open standard could be created by the Govt, and all the car companies could follow.

Re:Glad to see they put this in a hybird car.

[thefultonhow]

Why don't they have cars that drive themselves on the interstate? Actually, 5 or 6 years ago there was a pilot program where they deployed magnets in 13 miles of California freeway and equipped Buicks (yeah... go figure...) to do the whole automated driving thing. But that never got any farther than those 13 miles, as far as I know. Why?

Well, I'd have to guess it's a similar reason why we never converted to the Metric system--infrastructure problems. Simply put, there are far too many miles of highway (46,000-somthing at last count), far too many sensors per mile, and far too few tax dollars to spend on the project. It was the same thing with Metric in the 70s--the government said we'd be metric in five years, only to find out the hard way that there were too many miles of freeway, too many die changes, too much opposition from corporations... you get the idea.

Re:Glad to see they put this in a hybird car.

[zero_offset]

I love the Hybrid car philosophy, it is a step away from gas-guzzling SUV's. This is a great incentive for people to buy a Prius over another car too, and the body on the new models look alot better than the older ones. My friends dad has a Prius, and it drives fast, and it rides ALOT more smooth than a traditional car. I just don't know why this idea was never embrassed before. Also, how come we don't have cars that can drive themself on the interstate? It doesn't seem like it would be hard at all, since they could just implement sensors into an interstate quite simply since it is all managed by the government, an open standard could be created by the Govt, and all the car companies could follow.

You claim the Prius rides more smoothly than a traditional car, but I suspect your experience with cars is merely limited to low-end econoboxes. Try hopping into a decent mid-range Benz one day for a smooth ride.

The hybrid concept was not previously embraced because (1) people didn't care about that kind of thing (it doesn't come cheaply or easily), (2) the cars look awful; it is only recently that the national sense of style has been so stunted that the design of the Prius is considerd somewhat acceptable, and (3) the technology wasn't really up to the challenge until recently (in any affordably mass-producible sense). I would also question whether it's actually being "embraced" yet -- I'd say it is still something of a curiosity at best, although it is definitely gaining ground.

We don't have cars that drive themselves because this is a very complicated problem to solve. It may not seem like a hard problem to you because you probably spend too much time watching TV (an admittedly gratuitous conclusion I'm drawing at least partially based on your command of the written word). There are plenty of people doing real work on the problem (here and here are some examples).

Furthermore, "they" would be facing a mighty huge bill to "implement" these sensors you're dreaming up, and your statement that government involvement would somehow magically simplify everything only further detracts from the value of your commentary. The project you can read about here estimates 7.5 miles of highway will cost $200 million to rebuild with a sensor-based system, with 80% of that cost being borne by "them"... who are, of course, actually us, better known by the name "taxpayers".

why?

[ShadowRage]

Why are we encouraging laziness? bad enough people already can barely drive, so why make it easier for them to be better screw ups, stop microsoftizing everything people, because if the technology fails, what are people gonna do? Like one dude said, market these to people who honestly need the technology (eg, semi-paralyzed people, older folks, etc) Stop giving people an excuse for being dumbasses.

I saw this today

[abhisarda]

on the NHK channel(Japanese TV, nhk.or.jp). It is actually a very spiffy car. It looks sleek and more like a mini-minivan than the regular Prius. Also, this model was black in color.
In the demonstration the man driving the Prius stopped the car a little ahead of a parking spot, then on the LCD screen, pressed the left & right buttons(Im guessing, cuz it was in japanese and too small to read) and then the car parked itself right on the spot intended. The driver at that time was "look ma, no hands". There were front and rear cameras and while parking the car was emitting a sound similar to the "put seatbelt on" one.