Slashdot Mirror
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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
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
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!
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.
;)
:)
I'm not sure about the physics involved, but my experience tells me that the going back and forth technique seems to have rather diminishing returns... often I find that redoing the whole thing (driving back out on the street and revising my entrance vector) is more worthwhile. The fact that most cars only have wheels which turn in the front could be significant.
So maybe the major limitation is not that major after all? I might be seriously wrong though
PS. Offtopic sidenote: It's nice to see the Linux big boys in here with random Finnish coders like myself
.: Max Romantschuk
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.
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
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.
Only on Slashdot is parallel parking described in terms of an "entrance vector."
irb(main):001:0>
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.