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Toyota Offers Automatic Parallel Parking Option
dstone writes "For drivers who can't parallel park very well, relief is available in Japan. Toyota Motor Corp. is offering a $2,200 option package for its Prius (a gas-electric hybrid car) that includes a computer imaging system which stuffs your car into parallel parking spaces on demand. The driver must manually initiate the process and control the brakes while the car steers in reverse. Some might say if you can't master parallel parking, perhaps you shouldn't be driving. However, the article at Modbee.com points out that in Japan, streets are jammed and parallel parking spaces can be ruthlessly small. 80% of Prius customers have opted for this package. But will the car plug the meter when I run out of time?"
Free up some of that driving time for important things like cell-phoning, child-swatting, and make up-applying.
I have been pwned because my
Still interesting and all but old as the hills. The technology is even older than Toyota's products as well, handicapped conventions have had similar systems for years.
vampirical
Finally, there's hope for women!
Alot of the cars now come with a sensor that alrets the driver when aproaching the the car behind. Couldnt the automatic parking system make use of this? and therefore fully automate the process.
Parking Assist relies on a built-in computer, steering sensor and a tiny camera in the car's rear and works like this: A dashboard display shows the image taken by the camera. When you near a parking space and shift into reverse, computerized lines pop up on the display, along with arrows pointing up, down, left and right.
Using the arrows, you move the lines around until they define exactly where you want the car to be parked. Then you push the "set" button on the display. Keep your foot lightly on the brake pedal, and the car will start backing up, the steering wheel responding to an invisible hand. Voila, the car will park itself in the spot you've chosen with the arrows.
But be careful. Hands-free driving doesn't mean you can read a book or doze off. The system has no artificial intelligence that actually recognizes objects -- so it won't stop for a person or a cat or anything else you shouldn't be running over. You still have to hit the brakes yourself. And the system is designed so that it will shut itself off if you lift your foot from the brake pedal, making the car go too fast. Intelligent Parking Assist also will back you into a garage, and can "remember" three parking spots.
And now for the major limitation: The system works only in situations where the car can continuously back up into a space -- not for those tight spots where you must inch your way into a space by going back and forth, wrestling with the wheel.
>>esr>>
I guess learning how to do things on your own is going the way of the do-do bird, so to speak.
Slashdot: Where people pretend to be twice as smart as they really are by behaving like children.
. . . is there a program that helps you to get out of that parking space?
I mean it's all very well being able to cram yourself into a tight parking space, but getting out might just be a bit trickier.
IMHO. This is totally overkill for a car that drives like a golf cart.
It has to be able to get into the space in one go - it can't shuffle back and forward to straighten itself out. Apparently this is why the feature won't be offered in the UK - our metered parking spaces aren't long enough for it to be able to park itself neatly.
Anyway, it's an extremely cool feature and all, but is parking really that hard? Mind you, I'm the sort of automotive Luddite that thinks that power steering's a bad idea, so maybe I'm not the right man to ask.
This article is a DUPE!
HOW'S MY POSTING? CALL 1-800-POSTING
In the UK being there is a parallel parking component to the driving test. Not sure what effect it's had though.
--
This sig is inoffensive.
Reminds me of a comment made to my wife (English) while she was a student in the USA. She reversed into a parking bay at the mall, and was congratulated. "You must be British" they said "an American wouldn't be able to park in reverse".
Now before you all toast me, I don't hold this to be a general truth. But European cars are smaller and parking bays are often more crowded than their North American counterparts. And I'm led to believe this could be even more so in Japan.
So yay to anything that helps you parallel park in a confined space.
...it could turn all four wheels 90 degrees.
I'd settle for it berating ticket-writing meter maids when I run out of time.
What pricks my curiosity is why large cars are such a status symbol. In a city like New York, you have these massive limos that must be impossible to park (I guess that's why you get one with a driver, so they can drive around the block while you entertain yourself). London seems to be riddled with big ol' 4wd monsters that never even see a national route, let alone go off-road. Admittedly the Smart car is a bit uglee, but if you're only going to be averaging 30mph and need to park to a short order, seems a sensible option...
My 2 coppers.
- Lnr
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
I can't parallel park for shit. I need a space before the empty space I'm pulling in to, and even then, I rarely get it in there nice and tight. In a pinch I can pull it off.
I kind of feel shame about it!
Will the insurance company pick it up if you (I mean it) damages another car?
In the US, these have to pass some stern Government 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?
HOW'S MY POSTING? CALL 1-800-POSTING
I know nothing about lawsuits in Japan, so this may not be a factor.
But when I read the article (bad slashdotter, BAD!) and came to the part that said 'there is no onboard object recognition, so there is nothing that is going to stop you from running over something in the parking space.' I thought, oooohhhh boy.
I don't think this will make it to the US for this reason. If it does, then the first time someone runs over someone elses dog all hell is gonna break loose. People are gonna be saying that it is in fact Toyota's fault that they ran over the dog.
Stupid lawsuits, stupid people.
Come to think of it wew may never get that feature in the US no matter how good of a job they do.
Lets say a company does make a decent object recognition package for the car, is it possible for them to actually be 100 percent sure that the car will recognize an object in 100 percent of situations that come along?
Cause as soon as that figure moves to 99 percent then some doofushead is gonna argue that the object recognition feature takes the responsibility of running something over out of there hands and into the car manufacturers hands.
Nah, we will never see it on our shores.
"Park in that parking bay, Pirus"
"I'm sorry, Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that... and my air-conditioning unit needs replacing..."
(car runs over driver after geting out)
Sorry... had to be said...
Does this make my brain look big?
Its bloody hard to parallel park when your pissed :)
Seriously, this is just one step closer to the car that drives itself - its going to take a long time for the public and the laws to allow this to happen, but eventually it will happen.
You can't expect to wield supreme executive power, just because some watery tart threw a sword at you
I could have used that on my driver's test. I was doing great on my driving test until I got to the parallel parking bit.
Picture this, an empty suburban street. Just one car parked on the road. All I have to do is park behind it. 10 min later, my car is about 6 feet away from the curb, at a 30 degree angle.
The woman giving me the test looked over the brim of her glasses and said, ``You want to try that again honey?''
I wanted to say no, because I was actually rather proud of how close I had gotten that time.
But, I tried again, with the same result.
``Why don't we move on.'' She said.
In the end, she passed me, but with the words, ``You're a very cautious driver, but the worst parallel parker I've seen in my entire career.''
--
In London? Need a Physics Tutor?
American Weblog in London
But will the car plug the meter when I run out of time?
Why not. This would be technically trivial. You modify the parking meter to have rfid sensors just like those toll booths. So you pull up to the thing and it just starts charging your parking account. You leave, it stops. No more getting angry because you left 1hr for the other guy. Or realizing that you didn't bring any quarters with you. Or running out in the middle of a meeting to stuff the meter.
I happen to have a Toyota. But I've applied Occam's Razor to the problem. When I need to get the thing into a tight spot, I just kinda put my shoulder into it and nudge it sideways.
Two thousand bucks my !@#$. These things weight 100, 120lbs, tops...
My
Limekiller
pedestrians
Some might say if you can't master parallel parking, perhaps you shouldn't be driving.
Let's hope not. *pats driver's license*
Software Wars
How dare you! Men have just as much right as women to chat on cell phones, swat at their children, and apply make up!
Best solution I saw once to the problem of parallel parking, was a car with a set of small wheels which could be lowered when you wanted to park. They were mounted 90 degrees to the main wheels, so you drew up next to the place you wanted to park, dropped the wheels and "drove" in sideways.
;)
Of course the Italians won't need this device, if the space isn't big enough they tend to ram the other cars until it is
Philip
Signatures are broken
Women are fully capable of driving as well as a man--
Yeah, but they don't.
(And yes, I realize your post was satirical.)
Actually, the only sexism here is in your post. Nice try, but try again. :)
He did *not* say "Bitches need mo' time fo' talkin' on their cells, slapping the ho' kids, and puttin' on make up." :)
heading for that -1 Troll mod again
Like what I said? You might like my music
I live in london and if a car is parked with one wheel up on the kerb and the backend of the car sticking out into the road you can almost :)
guarantee a woman parked it especially if its one of those "lifestyle" 4x4s that only tiny women with kids seem to drive. Maybe female ex-pats park well
abroad because they're the good parkers who got fed up with their car being bashed every time they went shopping and decided to emigrate
The French have a much simpler low tech answer to the problem.
Everybody leaves there parking brake off, then, the car parking nudges the already parked cars along to make a big enough space.
Anyone foolish enough to actually engage the parking brake gets dented both ends.
Old COBOL programmers never die. They just code in C.
Truth is, a lot of drivers out there are probably a hazard to the rest of us, but anything that assists them and makes them less of a hazard is a good thing in my opinion.
Just because you're good at parallel parking, manual shifting, and using a command line doesn't mean that anyone who can't do those things well is inferior.
This would make my job as a valet a bit easier :D
"where words meet intent, lies rhetoric's lament"
and there'll be a disclaimer with words to the effect of "you have responsibility for the car" much like you do with power steering and cruise control.
In my experience, female motorists tend to be more worried about their wing mirrors being clipped by passing vehicles, and more considerate about leaving adequate space for the drivers either side of them, and park their cars accordingly.
I will, however, reinforce the grandparent posters point, albeit more directly. I was learning how to drive in the UK when I went on an long summer holiday to Florida. At the time I went over, my driving instructor thought I had a fair way to go (and I did) before I could consider taking a driving test and getting my licence. But, when I got to the US, getting a licence over there was ridiculously easy by comparison.
For one thing, learners in the UK (and in most countries) learn in manual (ie, stick-shift) rather than automatic vehicles, quite the opposite of their US counterparts. For another, they have a whole handbook of information that they have to absorb, with details on everything from road signage, stopping distances, driving in hazardous conditions, etc - from what I saw, theoretical knowledge is barely tested in the US.
Also, the most tricky manouvre tested in the US seems to be parking, whereas in the UK you also have to safely demonstrate emergency stopping, reversing around a corner, making a three-point turn (turning around the direction of your car in a confined area using forward and reverse gears), etc.
Nowadays the UK standards are even tougher, with two seperate stages, a theoretical test and a practical test, both of which must be passed to attain a driver's licence. I believe the standards in some European countries (such as Germany, if I remember correctly) are just as strict.
In some places, such as Northern Ireland, newly qualified drivers are required to wear special plates on their cars to alert other drivers of their rookie status, further ensuring road safety.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
You know, you could just grab a couple of chairs, go to a parking lot, and practice for 30 minutes. Assuming you still have intact chairs, you should be able to parallel park just fine for the rest of your life. It's not that hard, but maybe some people would rather spend a few thousand dollars than 30 minutes learning something.
I've heard that some drivers training instructors are using toy cars to demonstrate how parallel parking works; some people can have a hard time visualizing it. I think the problem is that cars steer radically different when in reverse than when they're going forwards; this could be why some people have trouble backing up in general.
I can see this option being very popular with the parkingly challenged (trying to be politically correct) gender. It should also make their non-gender-specified spouses happy as it will mean less dings and scratches.
It's serial parking that's hard.
Fuck the system? Nah, you might catch something.
BMW is coming out with this option in a few years as well. Along with their Active Cruise control and Active steering this is a welcomed option.
100% Insightful
GMC is now offering four-wheel steering on some of their trucks and they use parallel parking as an example in their commercial. When I was a kid I saw a cartoon that had a car that turned all four wheels perpendicular to the road and drove the car straight into the parking space. I can't remember which studio but I think it was meant as a gag on the "products of the future"-type shows. I still think that would be a neat idea.
I wouldn't say I'm a bad gambler but the last time I went to Vegas I even lost a buck on the soda machine.
Just buy a winch for your SUV. Then you're never out of room.
Here
If you don't want to repeat the past, stop living in it.
Correct, there's no clutch and what the Prius does isn't what you think of as "shifting".
The Prius CVT is much cleverer and simpler than the usual cone-shaped gear.
There's an explanation and a Flash animation at http://www.howstuffworks.com.
The entire transmission consists of one constant-mesh planetary gear assembly. The outer ("ring") gear is permanently connected to the electric drive motor-generator and to the differential. The "planet" gears are on a carrier permanently connected to the gas engine. The central ("sun") gear is permanently connected to the motor-generator that sits between the gas engine and the battery pack, and which serves as both the starter and the battery charger.
The magic is that the onboard computer, by rerouting electricity to/from the battery pack, can set the speed of the sun gear independently of what else the car is doing. Once that speed is set, there's a sort of gear ratio between the gas wheels and the engine. That ratio can be set to infinity when the car is running in pure electric mode, or to zero during warmup, the only time when the gas engine idles. A gear ratio of zero eliminates the need for a clutch.
Looking at it mathematically, the planetary gear system is one linear equation in three unknowns (the speeds of the gears). Set one unknown, the speed of the sun gear, and it's one (linear) equation in two unknowns. Solve that and you've got a linear relationship.
Looking at it physically, because the gears are always engaged and always have the same number of teeth, there's a fixed torque split. Because rotation speed can be changed, and power is torque times rotational speed, there's a changeable power split.
Looking at it in engineering terms, there are no clutches to wear out, no fluid couplings to leak, and no friction bands to go bad. The count of moving parts is breathtakingly low. It's one of the most elegant achievements of mechanical engineering and helped win the Prius the Society of Automotive Engineers award for Best Engineered Car of 2001.
The Volkswagen automatic parking system of a decade ago was better.
What's really needed are low-cost 3D imaging laser rangefinders, to get an unambiguous picture of the nearby obstacles. Such devices are quite possible if there's a market for them. Today's laser rangefinders are big and clunky, but that's due to the tiny size of the market.
It's coming. Two no-moving-parts 3D laser rangefinders exist in prototype right now. One is too low power and doesn't have enough range. The other is too high power and isn't eye-safe (the application is antiaircraft missile guidance.) In a few years, this technology should filter down to the robotics and automotive communities.
One of my friends cant really handle forward parking! let alone reverse it takes about 10-20 backwards and forwards cycles to get in and im not exagerating! (or spell checking) I think slowly bit by bit these minor things will get replaced by automatic systems until it all pretty much goes auto.
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in virginia parallel parking is no longer required to get a licence. aparentally it hasn't been for like 10 years. does this bother anyone but myself?
There are 10 kinds of people: those that understand binary code and those that dont
I distinctly remember an episode of "Beyond 2000" in which they show a prototype of a car than can parallel park itself.
Not too bad at all, it's only 4 years "Beyond 2000" and these things are showing up.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
This should leave the driver with both hands free to make the appropriate hand signals to the cars behind that are honking. Seriously, the worst thing about parallel parking is that the cars usually follow too close to allow you to back into a place.
JET Program: see Japan, meet intere