Linux-Powered Auto-Parking Car

megmag writes "A really cool project using a Linux P4 machine for automatic parking of a Volvo S60 was presented last week. Take a look at the video. That's how your parking problem should be solved. It is a final-year student project within the mechanical engineering department at Linköping University, Sweden."

Comments

This is cool

[AviLazar]

For the inept :) Then again I know a few women (no offense) who could really use this. Especially suburbanites :)

Re:This is cool

[Wilkshake]

But you have to remember that they put it into a Volvo.

It think that's a more telling factor.
-

Re:This is cool

[MoonFog]

Why is this modded flamebait? Women, and also alot of men, really HAVE problems parking because it often involves driving in reverse. It doesn't help that you often have little time to do the parking because of the other cars waiting to get past you. Alot of people tend to turn the wheels the wrong way when driving in reverse.

Re:This is cool

[Servo]

Up until just a couple months ago, I had always lived in suburbs or semi-rural areas. When I was a teenager and got my license, they didn't even care about parallel parking.

For those of us in this situation, I wouldn't say we are inept, just inexperienced.

As for horrible women drivers.. I agree. They are at least as horrible as men drivers. :)

Re:This is cool

[robertjw]

Personally I feel that any person that can't manage to park their car shouldn't be allowed to drive it at all.

Of course I also think that at least 80% of the people on the road are scarier than hell and shouldn't be allowed to drive. Don't believe me? Turn on your local news for the first snow storm of the season (if you don't get snow, find the Denver newscast - it's always humorus). I'm always amazed at the way people who live in an area that gets bad weather EVERY YEAR will wreck their car the first time there is three inches of snow. Maybe if we actually taught people how to drive there would be less traffic fatalities in this country - actually, probably not, Everybody knows that traffic accidents are caused by people not wearing their seat belt.

Re:This is cool

[Kazuma-san]

Luckily I got trained in parralel parking, since it is part of the driver's licence around here, though it did not help much. My tutor always told me turn around the wheel when you are at 45 to the road, but since I am terrebly bad at hunching, I can hardly tell from within my car when the 45 degree are reached, so I was quite happy reading that a penguin could do this for me, until I saw that video. honestly, if the system requires such a vast parking gap, it is hardly of any use. 1. even I could park the car without any problems under these conditions 2. you won't find much of these in todays cities, without having to pay for it. So I suppose there is yet a long way to go for these systems. Or I should not try to get in these tiny spots anyway :)

Re:This is cool

[Short Circuit]

Here in Grand Rapids, MI, we usually get a lot of snow in the winter. Sure there will be accidents, but it doesn't approach epidemic proportions.

By comparison, look at Florida or Texas, where all the schools close if the ground turns white at all...

Re:This is cool

[DZign]

they're in sweden - 80 percent or so of all cars there is either a volvo or a saab..

Re:This is cool

[Paulrothrock]

There was a show on the Discovery channel a while back about the differences between men and women. They were given the task of parking a car (VW New Beetle) in a space 1 foot longer than the length of the car. All of the men who tried could do it. Only 70% of the women could get it in. While not a definitive study, it does provide some non-anecdotal evidence that this is the case.

To be fair, in the same show they did an experiment where men and women were given a list of things to do in a time limit. Things like answering the door, the phone, cooking, cleaning, writing out a grocery list, and other basic household stuff. All but one of the men failed to finish in the time period, and experienced significantly more stress in accomplishing these tasks. They also tended to do one thing at a time and got flustered when their concentration was broken. All of the women had no trouble finishing the same tasks from the same list in the same environment.

Re:This is cool

[DZign]

parallel parking is easy:
- drive next to the car you want to park behind
- when the backsides of the car are equal, start turning your wheel (you've got to practise a bit how fast) while driving backwards
- when you see his outer front corner in your mirror (so parking left you see his front left corner in your left mirror, parking right side you see his front right corner in your right mirror)
you turn your steering wheel in the other direction
- you're parked

Re:This is cool

[DZign]

in step 3 with 'his' I mean the car behind you

Re:This is cool

[Last_Available_Usern]

I can reach over to the passenger side and roll the window down, but I'd much rather click a little button next to me that does it automatically. Doesn't mean I don't still know how to roll down a window.

Re:This is cool

[WormholeFiend]

I certainly hope you don't manually roll down the passenger side window WHILE DRIVING!

Re:This is cool

[cloudmaster]

Sometimes I need to roll that window down while driving. Back before power windows, the speed limits were higher *and* people leaned over to roll their windows down. If you want a real shock, wait 'till I get hot enough to roll the *back* windows down while driving... ;)

Re:This is cool

[cloudmaster]

Luckily, the state governments are engaged in a campaign to raise extra money, err, "save lives" by writing more tickets out for those *crazy* drivers who endanger everyone else by - look away if you're faint of heart - driving *without* a seatbelt! Ohh, the horror of enountering someone who's not bucked in to their car! Don't they care about how sad I might or might not become if they hurt themselves? :)

Re:This is cool

[jswhiting]

I just hope nobody takes this anecdotal evidence and makes the wrong conclusion - that men and women have inherent, instrinctive, or otherwise natural propensities for either driving cars or making grocery lists.

Simply put, we get good at what we do, and we "do" gender differences all the time, therefore we get good at them :)

Re:This is cool

[WormholeFiend]

reminds me of a spoof "cigarettes kill" radio joke, modelled after the "drinking and driving ads".

You hear a guy driving, talking to himself "now where did I put my cigs... oh there they are -- on the back seat! hmmf hmmf hmmmf almost... almost..." *tires screeching* *CRASH!*

Voice-Over: "Don't Smoke and Drive"

Re:This is cool

[AsbestosRush]

I had no problems doing this in my 1993 escort wagon. Helps that the car was small enough to be considred an "econo-box". :) Never took my eyes off of the road either.

Re:This is cool

[billcopc]

The only reason women get lower rates is because insurance agents, much like bankers, are too damn quirky to get laid, so they use favoritism to steer the materialistic socialites toward their pants.

Re:This is cool

[bryanthompson]

Especially watch newbies to the SUV world. Most people think that because they drive a 4wd SUV they can take on anything. WRONG! It's always fun to watch them especially.

Re:This is cool

[Paulrothrock]

Same show, different experiment.

Men and women were asked to draw a bike from memory. Women always had all the right parts, but rarely in the right places. Men rarely had all the parts, but always in the right places. There is a difference in how men and women's minds work. It's not that one is better or worse than the other, it's that they're different.

Re:This is cool

[jswhiting]

There are exhibitable differences in how men and women think and behave, no doubt, but who can show that these differences are not the result of a lifetime of training in a complex social environment under intense pressures?

Maybe you could do an experiment to show that men "have a higher capacity for algebra", or "have a higher capacity for mechanical engineering," by doing some basic tests. However, in our society, women are encouraged NOT to understand algebra and engineering. Why? Because a woman who does is unattractive!! Think about the stereotypes and the status quo here - imagine what the general student opinion would be of a girl in high school who took and aced advanced calculus? Do you think the guys would be "all over her"? What would her friends think? In the greater scheme of the social environment, we enforce gender difference in a very complex interlocking web of pressures.

Re:This is cool

[MightyTater]

In (north) Texas, it doesn't snow so much. We do get freezing rain and are not generally prepared. Why should schools remain open when busses can't route across overpasses?

Re:This is cool

[ktulu1115]

Because a woman who does is unattractive!!

I don't know about you but I think any women who is intelligent enough to be an ME is quite attractive... Most women I know (no offense ladies) are ditzes, or maybe they purposely put on that facade.

Any female who I can carry on an intellectually stimulating conversation with scores mad points with me. Any other guys out there feel the same?

Re:This is cool

[Politburo]

FYI, "Click it or Ticket" is a federal program. But, the purpose of the program is not because we care about other people getting hurt, per se. When an accident occurs where one or more participants is not wearing a seatbelt, the likelihood of serious injury or death goes way up. An accident with serious injury or a fatality will take more time, manpower, and money to clean up and investigate. These bills are paid by all taxpayers, not by the people that 'cause' the accident (many states have 'no-fault' laws, so no one legally causes the accident, it just happens). The purpose of the program is twofold: Make money through increased citations, and, save money through a decrease in fatal and serious accidents.

Re:This is cool

[Analise]

I think the "woman who does is unattractive" comment was made in the "general society" sense of the word. Not necessarily in the "nerd society" sense. ;) That said, there's plenty of instances I can think from my life where girls were "expected" not to keep up with the boys, as far as technical things go. Or all the girls I hear about who go to college for the sole purpose of meeting a guy and getting married. *headshake* But that's another story.

Re:This is cool

[Analise]

When I was a teenager and got my license, they didn't even care about parallel parking. I don't even live in a suburb/semi-rural area, but in fact, a decent sized town. My driving test consisted of driving around one block, one time. No parallel parking, didn't drive over 30mph, only encountered stop signs not lights, you get the idea. The written part wasn't even that hard. So yeah, suffice to say, I only parallel park if I absolutely have to because I've yet to have much experience at all doing it.

Re:This is cool

[Paulrothrock]

Mmmm... chick who aced calc... *drool*

Of course, I'm a freak, so I don't count. Damned statistical outliers.

Re:This is cool

[admdrew]

I live in Duluth, MN, somewhere else that gets quite a bit of snow, so I really know what you mean. Family friends of ours in Texas say that the main reason schools and businesses close with so little snow is because they don't have the ability to deal with snow like we do up here. If it snows practically at *all* in Duluth (it's probably the same where you live), plows come out and salt/sand/plow some of the busier streets as early as 3 or 4 am. Towns that don't normally have snow probably don't have access to machinery like that.

Still think those people down south complain about snow too much :P

Re:This is cool

[Paulrothrock]

My fiance is wicked smart, and that's really sexy. Not a geek per se, unless you get her talking about her major.

I get really turned on when she starts critiquing other people's research techniques... *drool*

Re:This is cool

[scharkalvin]

My wife and I rented a U haul trailer to bring some stuff back from up north. She tried to back the van and trailer into our driveway, but kept getting the angle wrong and either jackknifing the trailer or almost wiping out our mailbox. Finally I said "let me try it". I've NEVER driven with trailer before, but I nailed it almost perfectly the first time. I couldn't explain how I knew when to cut the wheel and how much, it was just seat of the pants.
Maybe flying a taildragger for years helped?

Re:This is cool

[drinkypoo]

In many places, parallel parking WAS part of the driving test, and they removed it.

If you cannot parallel park, you are inept. Not being able to parallel park well is excusable, as long as you are willing to noodle around until your vehicle is in the right place.

You have a responsibility to know how to drive your car, and that includes parking. Unfortunately, most people shirk this responsibility... You can practice parallel parking with a couple of cardboard boxes on an empty street, and a car. There is no excuse.

Re:This is cool

[Anonymous Coward]

maybe watching someone else screw it up from the outside was beneficial as well.

My fiancee and I go rock climbing together. The one who climbes second gets farther, having had a chance to learn from watching another.

Re:This is cool

[jyristys]

You hear a guy driving, talking to himself "now where did I put my cigs... oh there they are -- on the back seat! hmmf hmmf hmmmf almost... almost..." *tires screeching* *CRASH!*

Pretty much exactly that happened to someone I know, except she was reaching for a ringing mobile phone instead of cigarettes when she hit a road sign.
My how we laughed when we saw the VW wrapped around a speed limit sign which was the _only_ possible thing to hit on that straight road between two fields.

Re:This is cool

[cloudmaster]

While "click it or ticket" is a nationwide program with federal funding, it's enforced by the states, and the money from the tickets goes to the state and county of issue.

Anyway, they're approaching the problem in the wrong way. The way to reduce problems due to accidents is to reduce accidents to begin with, not to make people safer if they're involved in an accident. A "no fault" accident is caused by incompetence or bad choices, in general. Enforcing turn signal usage would be a good way to prevent a whole pile of accidents (and a good way to prevent "road rage") before they happen, as would making people actually prove that they can drive *well* rather than just proving that they can memorize some following distances to pass a written test.

There needs to be a friggin' autocross course located behind each and every DMV, IMHO, and if you can't get the provided car (or your own, possibly) though the course in the prescribed time without running over some cones, then you can't navigate the streets adequately and therefore can't have a license. *That* would reduce the number of accidents, and would probably save more money than it'd cost. It'd also get some politicians voted out of office by the old and/or incompetent, and therefore won't happen. :(

Re:This is cool

[raodin]

I hate to break it to you, but guys who ace calc aren't usually considered "cool" by their peers either ;)

Re:This is cool

[ktulu1115]

Very true, I am certainly inclined to agree with you there.... The thing I've noticed though is, the more a guy wants to find a "less intellectual" (read: stereotypical blonde) girl, the less "intelligent" he is himself. Guess the apple doesn't fall too far from the tree, so to speak.

Re:This is cool

[DaZedAdAm]

Well I happened to take my AP Calculus class two years ago with a girl who aced it and had guys "all over her." Not only that, but she was the homecoming queen, Miss , senior class president, and finished in the top 10 of our 367 in our class. Also, like me, she was a band nerd. She marched in the marching band, played in the symphonic band, tried out for all-state and other honor bands, and even became one of the three drum majors of our 200+ person marching band.

This girl was one of the most physically attractive, popular, and intelligent people in our school, while also being a math and band nerd.

Re:This is cool

[NanoGator]

"Why is this modded flamebait? Women, and also alot of men, really HAVE problems parking because it often involves driving in reverse."

Slashdot had an article last year about women's spatial acuity. That could affect their ability to drive.

Re:This is cool

[(54)T-Dub]

How does one get their car to "wrap around" and speed limit sign? Unless you are driving a golf cart wouldn't you simply plow over it? Maybe my exageration meter is broken.

Re:This is cool

[Politburo]

While an autox test would increase spatial awareness and give drivers more experience making more aggressive maneuvers, I'm unsure of how many accidents it would prevent. Highway accident data (specifically the NY Thruway just west of the Tappan Zee) lists 'following too close' as the cause of somewhere around 75-80% of accidents. Now, I realize that the accident data only has a small area for accident cause, and that some of these listed as 'following too close' will have other factors involved. However, based on this emprical data and my anectodal driving experince, it is my opinion that a vast majority of accidents are caused by a combination of three factors, in decreasing order of importance: following distance/spatial awareness, lack of operator attention, speed.

While an autox type driving training will assist drivers somewhat in the first and third areas, it would be done with no traffic. Add in a few hundred cars a minute and it becomes a whole different situation. IMO, a large problem is that most drivers are only looking in front of them, if at all. Then, they are fiddling with the phone, the radio, the kid, the a/c, don't notice that the car up ahead has slowed, and slam into that vehicle, or swerve into another lane and hit a vehicle, or perhaps swerve off the road into the ditch. A majority of accidents I see, both accidents I've seen occur and accidents where I've only seen the aftermath, are rear-end accidents. An additional factor in this is that in some metropolitan areas, there is so much traffic that maintaining a proper following distance is nearly impossible. In these cases, it is still possible to drive safely, provided that more attention is paid to the road, in all directions. When the traffic gets that dense, I will tend to look 2 or 3 cars up in traffic to see when I will need to slow down. Another thing I never try to do is use the middle lane for a long amount of time in traffic. When in the outside lanes, there is always the shoulder as a last resort to smacking into the car in front of you. In fact, I used it just last week, though I probably could have stopped in time if I wanted to slam on the brakes. I didn't really want to find out, though.

Re:This is cool

[cloudmaster]

There are definately skills required that wouldn't be tested in autox - but I'm betting that those who could succesfully navigate the course would tend to be those who pay more attention in general, and who could therefore avoid an accident if such a situation came up. At least we'd have 2/3 better drivers...

If realistic simulators were available, that'd be even better - but those kind of things would be even more expensive than just setting up some cones in the parking lot. ;)

Anyway, I wish more people would realize that it's a good idea to leave an escape path in general. The shoulder's good - I've had to use it when my brakes failed, among other times that weren't my fault - and just not following so closely is a good idea.

I live in a smaller area than you, probably. Most of the accidents that I see are the result of someone pulling out in front of someone else. Actually, almost all of them have been like that. Those are largely the result of either inattentiveness or misjudging speed of approaching traffic v/s the speed the driver can accelerate. I'm really not sure how to eliminate those two problems, except possibly by mounting big spikes and some heavy steel plate to the front of my car. ;)

Re:This is cool

[nelsonal]

I have no problems with anyone* not wearing their seatbelts (might make them a safer driver).

*As long as they are carrying blue ribbon gold plated private insurance (indemnifying all other drivers of any medical costs regardless of accident fault), will not be using a subsidised public hospital, agree not to sue anyone, and won't claim the medical costs on their taxes. The problem hear is that many people who drive seatbeltless head to the ER and don't have any insurance (driving up the costs for everyone else).

Re:This is cool

[cloudmaster]

BTW, my main reasoning for an autox course is that I'd like to have an autox course nearby. I don't get enough chance to wring my car out on the street, so having a safe, closed environment would probably make me a safer driver by letting me work that out off of the street. ;)

Re:This is cool

[Kazuma-san]

Well I think I will try orientating on the mirrors, the next time. up till now i only tried with the rear and forward windows

Re:This is cool

[jswhiting]

Yes, and i would agree with you, and I should have preemtively responded to your (not unreasonable) counter point.

I think it was clear that i'm talking about the status quo. Many men find highly intelligent women attractive. However unfortunate, this is NOT one of the dominant features of steretypically attractive woman. Looking at popular media, intelligent women CAN be potrayed to be attractive/sexy/etc, but this is a more recent trend and it can often come along with some other gotchas, such as a simultaneous hardening of the pesonality, loss of empathy, compassion, free spiritedness, and other traits which are attributed to other (more popular) stereotypes of attractive women.

Consider the differences in our cultural response to male engineers and female engineers, male auto mechanics and female auto mechanics, male cops and female cops, etc. Take any profession that is typically male dominated and put a woman in that place, and look at the backlash. Now look at professions like secretaries, seamtresses, house maids, and so on, and put men in those positions, and look at the result (men in feminized roles = humiliation).

Don't get me wrong. One of my best male friends in the world is an ace on the sewing machine. But, this kind of social pressure is one reason (among many) why we (men & women) really do end up with different skill sets, which then become so-called "proven differences" when you do tests like on that Disney channel show.

The real problem is not the tests but the assumptions latent in the conclustions drawn from it.

So, one last thing - the original topic here was that women may end up needing a automatic parking feature in their car more than men would. This may or may not be true, but it's not because women are inherently bad at parking. It's that we live in a complex society with lots of overlapping pressures, which may, for exmaple, have the consequence of discouraging women from asserting precise control over a motor vehicle...

Re:This is cool

[Ironica]

Why is this modded flamebait?

Because, while you're right that:

Women, and also alot of men, really HAVE problems parking

The original poster said:

I know a few women (no offense) who could really use this.

If it said "I know a few people..." not only would the "no offense" tag have been unnecessary, because it wouldn't have been an inherently chauvinistic statement, but it would have been more accurate and not flamebait.

I've had to take over the wheel and parallel park for my husband before. It's a learned skill. If you know how to do it, you can p-park anything (I once astonished and amazed my friends by parallel parking a U-Haul with about 24" clearance). If you don't properly learn how to do it, it's very difficult. But it's not like men are inherently better at it or anything, at least in my experience.

Re:This is cool

[Psymunn]

From my personal experince, that advanced calculus class has a fairly lopsided male to female ratio. Any girl who shows up in that class... trust me, the guys will be "all over her." Of course, these males, more often then not, are not your typical alpha males and there for not considered desirable.
But I guess I'm wrong. Taking advanced classes makes a man attractive. In our society, no one is encouraged to take advanced calculus.

Re:This is cool

[Ironica]

Turn on your local news for the first snow storm of the season (if you don't get snow, find the Denver newscast - it's always humorus). I'm always amazed at the way people who live in an area that gets bad weather EVERY YEAR will wreck their car the first time there is three inches of snow.

You think that's bad... turn on the TV in Los Angeles when it rains. When*ever* it rains.

For one thing, it's the top story... "There's water falling from the sky!" But there's a ton of traffic accidents caused by people driving exactly how they always do, even though the pavement's wet and visibility is cut down. The best are people who go blazing through foot-deep puddles without slowing down, flood their brakes, and then slam into someone....

Re:This is cool

[jswhiting]

now just connect the dots and see how this could result in the differences "proven" on the Disney Channel show. i'm not saying they aren't there, i'm just questioning their origins.

Re:This is cool

[funshine]

No offense to anyone, but my personal pet peeve recently has been people who appear to be foreigners who are driving around in big cities and clearly do not know the rules of the road. Its wayyyy too easy to get a driver's license in California. :(

Re:This is cool

[funshine]

and just where did said statistics come from?

Re:This is cool

[swaic]

Here is one way guaranteed* to work.

1. Park about 12" to 18" away from the car behind which you would like to park and make sure your mirrors line up.
2. Turn your steering wheel one complete turn towards that car.
3. Hold the wheel and reverse slowly until your mirrors are in line with the back of the car.
4. Turn your wheel one full turn back in the opposite direction (away from the car).
5. Continue backing up until you're straight and in the spot.

Once you master that, just make small adjustments to compensate for differences in vehicle sizes.[Doitashimashite]


* - Providing the cars are approximately the same length. It won't work if you're driving a VW Golf and are trying to park behind a Ford Expedition.

Re:This is cool

[the morgawr]

You are correct (I've worked in Automotive Saftey Reseach). Traffic is one of the highest correlated factors in serious accidents (the reasons have to do with traffic being a string-stability type of dynamic system). Surprisingly absolute speed is not that large of a factor (because if everyone is going exactly 90, in most circumstances, there isn't going to be a crash if they are all driving "correctly").

When traffic gets heavy people start doing things like driving in lanes meant for passing, entry, and exit. They don't maintain a safe (appx. 2s, depending on car) forward headway. When they pass they fail to pass with sufficient speed (~15mph faster then the vehicle you are passing) and they almost never use their turn signals. I could go on. The really pathetic thing is that many states have unsafe driving laws that target this sort of behavior but they are rarely used.

The reason most people get out of the habit of doing these safe practices is predicted by game theory. By following those guidelines you are making the road more safe for others but not markedly improving your chances of not being in an accident. Because it is unlikely that something bad will happen to you when you do not follow them, the average person will simply ignore the rules, because the damage they are doing to others is not factored in to the decision. The solution to the problem is to actually start punishing the people who make the road unsafe instead of trying to use traffic as a revenue source like many states do. Stressing the importance of these safe practices should be top priority, not making money off of doing things that only make the road less safe in corner cases.

Re:This is cool

[mandalayx]

Personally I feel that any person that can't manage to park their car shouldn't be allowed to drive it at all.

I understand your sentiment: if someone can't even park their car, how can they drive?

But consider that parallel parking, in particular, might be a skill completely independent of actually driving. Here in Orange County you can have a complete and fulfilling driving life without EVER having to parallel park. There is some subset of those folks who are safe drivesr. Are you implying that they can't drive? Of course that's not the case.

Re:This is cool

[scharkalvin]

maybe watching someone else screw it up from the outside was beneficial as well.

Except I was too busy trying NOT to get run over!

Re:This is cool

[soft_guy]

Most women I know (no offense ladies) are ditzes

That's why I only sleep with prostitutes.

Re:This is cool

[Servo]

That's like saying people in the desert are inept because they don't know how to drive in the snow.

Re:This is cool

[Almost-Retired]

There needs to be a friggin' autocross course located behind each and every DMV, IMHO, and if you can't get the provided car (or your own, possibly) though the course in the prescribed time without running over some cones, then you can't navigate the streets adequately and therefore can't have a license. *That* would reduce the number of accidents, and would probably save more money than it'd cost. It'd also get some politicians voted out of office by the old and/or incompetent, and therefore won't happen. :(

Man, you've hit that nail square!!!

I am coming up on my 70th birthday, and the most fun, most educational time of my life was back in the 60's running a class c gokart, where you can make a mistake on the average short track, learn how you made it and how to recover from it, usually with no more than a skinned elbow or similar. And still do 135mph on a back country blacktop road when nobody is looking by tipping the alcohol can a little higher.

I recently wrecked our van by swinging wide left to square up a right turn, and some idiot tried to pass on the right! About 3 grand to put our 97 caravan back on the road. I didn't have the signals on so I wore the citation & lost $125.

I still drive fairly aggressively often enough to 'keep a hand in' because absolutely nothing beats practice, practice, practice.

That was the first 'call the insurance company' accident I've had since July 1968, when I was sitting at a stop sign and was headoned by a girl in a 66 mustang who was, in retrospect, probably blinded by my headlights.

So I think the practice has been good :)

FWIW, they totalled my 57 ford station wagon, but what really fried my beans was that the horse drove home afterwards with both headlights still burning. Them damned mustangs are tough...

Since the engine was still in fine shape, I bought it back for $35, and put that engine & C4 tranny in a 52 Ford pickup to hunt and fish with, my "concealed weapon" according to someone who got creamed in the stoplight grand prix by it a year later. The sign on the side of the hood still said it was an I6 :-)

Cheers, Gene

Re:This is cool

[SomeoneGotMyNick]

(many states have 'no-fault' laws, so no one legally causes the accident, it just happens)

In PA, we pay for no-fault by mandatory liability insurance. Nothing like fixed pricing minimums set by the state. That's why we get all the dumb insurance TV ads.

Re:This is cool

[drinkypoo]

Only if those people own snow-making machines.

Re:This is cool

[Tongo]

Okay, one of the more stupid things I've done (besides rolling down the passenger window while driving):
I once changed my shirt, shorts, socks, undershorts and shoes while doing 40mph. It went suprisingly well.

My boss used to take me to clients sites while talking on the phone, reading, writing, eating, and doing 15mph over.

This doesn't even touch the stupid stuff I've done 4x4ing. My guardian angel is pissed.

Re:This is cool

[cloudmaster]

Cool - I don't sue people, I take the conservative "don't audit me" approach to taxes, and I carry good insurance. I think that health care is overpriced, though, so subsidies are about the only way to support that - or possibly more responsible pricing by the industry, which has tasted the cash and now certainly won't give it back... :(

Re:This is cool

[cloudmaster]

Man, you included the C4 tranny but completely left out the engine's displacement. What kind of a car story is that? :)

Re:This is cool

[robertjw]

If I had mod points I'd mod you up.

Do you have any references for the items you listed? I would be interested in reading some reasearch on what kind of techniques actually help reduce accidents.

Re:This is cool

[ktulu1115]

Perhaps I should explain this... When I say "most women I know", I am referring *only* to those whom I have social interaction with, not just friends, or co-workers, or students (when I still was one).

Maybe I surround myself with the wrong type, although it's not like I'm looking for that.

Re:This is cool

[Paulrothrock]

1) Most people I deal with during the day are idiots. Half the population has an IQ under 100. Methinks this would explain why most people are stupid. Women, however, tend to take the "innocent idiocy" explanation, hoping their cuteness will excuse them. Men just get angry when you show them they're idiots.

2) I do not surround myself with such people. You might be a masochist, but I'm not. :-)

Re:This is cool

[mattis_f]

Although ... it has to be mentioned that even in this day and age, guys tend to be driving more than women, and women tend to be doing more household work than men. Could it be that they're simply better at doing what they do more often?

Re:This is cool

[Ironica]

I don't doubt you can park better than your husband, but if you think that particular examples of y being greater for y = female(x) than y = male(x) are some kind of valid evidence that the distribution of female(x) can't be different than the distribution of male(x) your math instincts are certainly lacking -- so maybe you fit the gender stereotypes better than you think.

My point was, as far as I can tell, men are not inherently better at parallel parking than women. That *is* a comment on the distribution. I gave a single example. Would you like me to list all of the people whose parallel parking skills I know something about, their gender, and rank them? Would that make you feel better about my math skills?

Instead of futilely trying to defend the indefensible position that women and men are identical

Which I did... where? I said that men are not inherently better at parallel parking. That it's a learned skill that a *lot* of people are bad at, regardless of gender. It's a big leap from there to "men and women are identical."

Turning a blind eye to gender differences entrenches discrimination rather than alleviating it.

Imagining gender differences where none exist entrenches discrimination, too. Women have less physical strength than men do; our laws *should* recognize that and consider threats of physical harm differently based on gender. They don't, though. On the other hand, women can learn to parallel park just as easily as men can, but people perpetuate the idea that they can't, and therefore it's no use teaching them. It's a matter of picking your imagined vs. real gender differences carefully.

Re:This is cool

[Almost-Retired]

Piss poor? Well, in fact it was just a 272 cid v8, the one made on the old 254-272-292-312 block family. Box stock (2 barrel carb) for a 57 ford station wagon. It wasn't exactly cherry, the back floor was sagged about 5 or 6 inches in the middle because my place didn't have a well, so 100+ gallons of water went into the cystern every day courtesy a pair of 55 gallon drums welded up end to end that laid on that floor about half the time it went to town. 900+ lbs rolling around back there could make things "interesting" for the driver, me. Times were tough, that accident was 2 weeks after I'd buried my first wife, and I had 3 kids (a boy 6, two girls 8 & 9) to raise as best I could. And I blew it big time by picking the wrong woman as my next wife. I fixed that eventually, but not nearly quick enough in retrospect.

But thats yet another story so I won't bore you further.

Cheers, Gene

Re:This is cool

[reanjr]

A woman who understands physics is so hot.

Re:This is cool

[mibus]

Snow?

Damn... we don't get snow here...

*moves house*

Re:This is cool

[ktulu1115]

1. Definately

2. No, I certainly am not but I think change is a good thing right about now...

Re:This is cool

[mdielmann]

Funny as that spoof sounds, there are accidents caused every year by smoking and driving. I don't smoke, but I know where my attention would be if I dropped a flaming coal in my crotch.

Re:This is cool

[cloudmaster]

Holy crap! All I needed to know was "272". ;)

I used to haul water in my truck - it's a big enough pain with the water sloshing around back there, I don't even wanna think about having the tank moving around too...

It's really too bad no one really remembers that there were more than just Chevy's produced in '57 (and '55). The Fords were neat, too...

Re:This is cool

[the morgawr]

> Do you have any references for the items you listed? I would be interested in reading some reasearch on what kind of techniques actually help reduce accidents.

Unfortunately I don't, when you start working in Active Saftey (aka Crash Prevention/Mitigation) Research for an Automotive Company they give you a few thousand pages of research reports to read. That was over 4 years ago and I just can't recal what reports that stuff was in. Especially since all of the information was on file in the company library, you just had to ask for the reasearch and they did the finding.

As far as I can remember, lots of stuff is done by the DOT (lots of analysis of what causes crashes), even more is done by European and Japanese Governments (a ton of stuff on maximizing traffic flow and how to analyze it). There isn't too much proprietary fundamental research, so that shouldn't be a problem. Most of the reasearch focuses on what causes undesirable traffic affects (crashes, backups, grid lock, etc), theoretically preventing those things that are likely to cause a crash, prevents crashes but not nearly as much effort is spent comparing the various prevention techniques (tickes v education etc).

It seems it has but one flaw

[foidulus]

whenever it parks behind Darl McBride's car, it keeps on slamming the gas and ramming into it...I wonder why

Re:It seems it has but one flaw

[ideatrack]

You're failing to see the potential in making a joke about Darl McBride being rammed from behind repeatedly, with a huge metal object.

Re:It seems it has but one flaw

[EvilTwinSkippy]

I dunno, but I keep seeing this message flash on the console when it does:

Jun 30 08:25:06 [parkd] Collision Warning
Jun 30 08:25:07 [parkd] SCOre!
Jun 30 08:25:24 [parkd] Backing up for another attempt...

Re:It seems it has but one flaw

[SlackAdams]

It just me, or do all the cars look like they're parallel parked, in vertical parking spaces ?

Re:It seems it has but one flaw

[CdBee]

That's not a bug, it's a feature.

Re:It seems it has but one flaw

[stor]

You're failing to see the potential in making a joke about Darl McBride being rammed from behind repeatedly, with a huge metal object.

Heh, Linux Inside(tm)

Cheers
Stor

Re:It seems it has but one flaw

[Punboy]

and what you all fail to realize is that he /wants/ to get rammed. Hence all the bad litigation and illegal use of the justice system... he wants to go to prison. Don't drop the soap everyone!

what the?

[FatAlb3rt]

cool, but i really could've done without the shirtless guy. wtf?

Re:what the?

[Patrik_AKA_RedX]

Another fine example why we need more women in engineering.

Re:what the?

[Anonymous Coward]

i agree... there is a lesson in this. i'm serious:

don't put any distractions into your presentations, they take away from the central idea you are trying to convey.

For instance, sample data to demonstrate a program: don't make it be something ridiculous and "funny", make it be something serious, and boring, and then your code will look it's best.

Re:what the?

[PetoskeyGuy]

There is another video without the guy. http://www.ikp.liu.se/evolve/2004/filmer/Park_auto .wmv

Re:what the?

[umthie10]

woman? in engineering? that's not a woman, that's a man, man!

Re:what the?

[balbeir]

He must be one of these darn metrosexuals

Re:what the?

[Laconian]

Those poor Swedes. He looked pretty sunburned.

uhhhhh

[Choachy]

He can program a car to park itself, but he cant put on a shirt?

Re:uhhhhh

[SphericalCrusher]

I think he just doesn't want to put on a shirt... you know? I'm pretty sure he knows how. It's just... hot and all.

Video clip, my ass!

[Osgyth]

And here I was thinking that I might actually get to see the clip. But alas, all I saw was a 30 sec long logo. Silly me, I must be new here.

that space would almost fit two cars

[funkdancer]

video is cool, but now try doing it in a real world situation where you've got 60% of that space...

I was surprised to be able to download the vid at full speed, though. :)

Re:that space would almost fit two cars

[Stevyn]

That's the first thing I thought when I saw this video. Hell, even I could park in that spot. They did a good job, but until they can park in a spot 8 inches longer than your car like in NYC, it doesn't have so much practical purpose. Nice trick nonetheless.

Re:that space would almost fit two cars

[mirko]

When I was in Germany, they'd fine you if you 'd let less than a meter between your park and the next so it might be the worst still legal situation in Sweden too.

Re:that space would almost fit two cars

[MrSpiff]

I was surprised to be able to download the vid at full speed, though. :)

one reason would be that Linköping's University has a 2.5Gbit uplink to the 10Gbit backbone called SUNET, one of the (if not "the") fastest university networks in the world :)

Re:that space would almost fit two cars

[wisdom_brewing]

BMW already have a system, to be implemented in the X5, all the driver has to do is let go of the break pedal (in the automatic), the car steers itself, having mapped out the space accurately and planning the perfect path in it...

Re:that space would almost fit two cars

[Sique]

I am German, and I never got fined for having less than a meter between my car and the next one. I can't also remember such a regulation from my driving lessons.

What may happen is that if the car parking next to you can't get out of its parking space, then you could get a fine for blocking it.

Re:that space would almost fit two cars

[Down_in_the_Park]

What? We have a lot of rules (which you don't HAVE to follow, but you can ;-) ), but I never heart about that one, and I broke some in the last 30+ years

Re:that space would almost fit two cars

[Xrikcus]

Which is all very well, as long as you weren't there first.

Re:that space would almost fit two cars

[sangdrax]

Maybe the university didn't want to take the chance that this final-year-student would trash three Volvos..

Re:that space would almost fit two cars

[dcsmith]

Hell, even I could park in that spot. They did a good job, but until they can park in a spot 8 inches longer than your car like in NYC, it doesn't have so much practical purpose.

Hell, I can carry a disk between computers faster than that 300 baud modem. If it can't transmit data any faster than that, it doesn't have much practical purpose. What's that? It'll get faster once people start using it and the technology improves? Huh. Who'd a thunk it?

Sheesh, people, lighten up. Proof of concept.

Re:that space would almost fit two cars

[vrt3]

I know we have a rule like that in Belgium, but I have never heard of a case where it was enforced, except perhaps when two cars where so close to a third one that the third one could not possible get out of the parking spot anymore.

Re:that space would almost fit two cars

[prefect42]

10 Gbit is fairly normal for academic networks, nothing out of the ordinary.

The JANET backbone in the UK is 10Gbps where it matters, but the load on the network still isn't that great.

Some interesting figures can be found below

http://www.ja.net/development/End_to_End_Network _P erformance/bbone-traf-diagram-2003-04-28.pdf

Re:that space would almost fit two cars

[GuyinVA]

True that. I don't know how it is in Sweden, but you'll never find that much room in the US.
And while I'm at it, this tech has been around for awhile. Show us something different to amuse us...

Re:that space would almost fit two cars

[ballpoint]

In the city - if there are no marked places - it's legal to park as closely to another car as you want. I once parked my car and couldn't reach the sidewalk because there was not enough space left in front or in the back to pass.

Re:that space would almost fit two cars

[AndroidCat]

Yup, you could park a small country in that space!

Did they use any kind of three laws of robotic parking?
1. I will not squash a human being.
2. I will not dent another car, except when this can not be observed by a human being that I can not squash.
3. I will not hang with my shiny metal ass out in the traffic. Blow horn and rules #1 and #2 can hang.
4. Restricted

Re:that space would almost fit two cars

[Mick Ohrberg]

BMW already have a system...

Yes, maybe so, but this is cool in an entirely different way. This is LINUX! I wonder if there will be a sourcefourge project for the above mentioned parkd. Now if the demo videos had only been of the S60R (semi-cheesy flash overload alert)...

Re:that space would almost fit two cars

[Dever]

uh huh...riiiight...

so you musta strafed your car into the space huh?

Re:that space would almost fit two cars

[mirko]

A friend of mine, Uta, got fined several time in Esslingen for this VERY reason.
Jetzt ist sie nach Bayern gefahren.

Re:that space would almost fit two cars

[vrt3]

Not in Belgium. Check http://www.wegcode.be/wegcode/art25.htm (if you understand Dutch...):

Art. 25: parkeerverbod

* 25.1. Het is verboden een voertuig te parkeren:

1. op minder dan 1 meter zowel voor als achter een ander stilstaand of geparkeerd voertuig en op elke plaats waar het voertuig het instappen in of het wegrijden van een ander voertuig zou verhinderen;

Babelfish translation:

Art. 25: parkeerverbod

* 25.1. It has been prohibited park a vehicle:

1. parked on less than 1 meter both for and behind a another one stationary or vehicle and at each place where the vehicle getting in in or driving away a another vehicle would prevent;

Hm, I think I can bo better than the fish...

Art. 25: parking prohibition

* 25.1. It is prohibited to park a vehicle:

1. at less than 1 meter both before and behind another stationary or parked vehicle and at each place where the vehicle would prevent getting in or driving away another vehicle;

Re:that space would almost fit two cars

[Down_in_the_Park]

God, may be less rules and more parking space, but... BAVARIANS! Die können, ja was eigentlich?

Re:that space would almost fit two cars

[martinthebrit]

I regularly used to park my car in the space outside my house so that it was touching the wall at the back and had barely the width of my calves to squeeze through to get to the house at the front. You can get into surprisingly small spaces with a bit of patience.

I gave up in the end and bought a car 2 feet shorter.

Re:that space would almost fit two cars

[Errtu76]

if people over here (holland) see that there's 1m available, they'll try to fit another car in :P

Re:that space would almost fit two cars

[ballpoint]

Well, well, you're right. Another great and henceforth unused occasion to collect monies by and for our suffocating government.

Suspicious

[PhysicsGenius]

The article notes that it uses ultrasound sensors to detect the curb and other cars, but I see there are a number of equally spaced white lines painted on the ground (farther out than parking lines are normally painted). How artificial was this test? Can it do arbitrary parallel parking?

Re:Suspicious

[dizdar]

that is because the parking lot that it is in is a normal parking lot. hence the lines pointing the wrong way.

Re:Suspicious

[EvilTwinSkippy]

Arbitrary parallel parking? Man they use a beowulf cluster for everything.

Re:Suspicious

[JanneM]

Those are normal parking lines, but meant for the cars to stand outwards, between them. I suspect that they simply borrowed this space and parallel-parked those other cars for the film sequence.

Re:Suspicious

[Ilgaz]

That will be the "Bus" version ;)

Why they used Linux...

[EvilTwinSkippy]

It crashed less than windows.

Re:Why they used Linux...

[eraserewind]

yeah, but having to type:

driver@volvo> park --parallel --time +5 --left

befrore getting out of the car gets to be a drag.

Re:Why they used Linux...

[Fuzzums]

the car you mean? ;)

Re:Why they used Linux...

[EvilTwinSkippy]

Sure beats: I see that you have activated that Automatic Parking System. Would you like to:

• Locate the nearest farmer's market?
• Park your car in the spot selected?
• Drive up a tree?
• Block in the guy who is trying to pull out of the spot you want?

Re:Why they used Linux...

[Ilgaz]

No, first

modprobe volvo.o
chmod /dev/volvo 666
etc etc etc

Re:Why they used Linux...

[mehgul]

Yet they're using windows media. Blech !

Re:Why they used Linux...

[dema]

Yes, as opposed to

Insert CD
Click Ok
Click Ok
Click Ok
Select I Agree
Click Ok
Click Ok
Click OK
Wait...
Click Finish
Click Ok
Restart
Login
Click Ok
Eject CD
PARK!

Re:Why they used Linux...

[andreMA]

Hmms...

Linux-powered car

[amliebsch]

Gee, mine's still powered my gasoline.

Re:Linux-powered car

[Dolda2000]

Then wait until you hear this - from what I've heard, this Linux thing is actually free!

Re:Linux-powered car

[the_weasel]

Hmm. Its still too inefficient for me. Perhaps they should try XML?

Re:Linux-powered car

[Ilgaz]

Imagine someone makes a car burning penguin oil and submits story "Linux powered car" ... Eww, ok, moving away from slashdot for a while, cya all :)

Funny, but if you look at the lines on the ground

[rsidd]

it looks like cars are supposed to park perpendicular to the edge there, not parallel. But both existing cars were also marked parallel.

Reason for shirtless guy

[Quizo69]

It's probably to appeal to the market segment most interested in this technology - women who work in the city and only ever get to see men in suits!

Don't forget, sex sells as well to women as it does to men.

Re:Reason for shirtless guy

[blahlemon]

If this is geared towards women then why the hell have a man in the car? To show that men are inferior and hence need this technology too? Why not show a smart, sexy business women who doesn't have the time to screw around with something as trivial as parallel parking and is happy letting the car do it for her? After all, if it's sex appeal they are going after, lots of studies have shown that both genders generally fine the female form more attractive then the male.

Re:Reason for shirtless guy

[Alexis de Torquemada]

Why, of course, they want to sell this system to women.

mirror

[Chalex]

Here's a mirror of the 3.84MB video.

Re:mirror

[elgaard]

Thank you but in this case it is not really needed:

>time wget http://www.ikp.liu.se/evolve/2004/filmer/Park_auto _no_driver.wmv
real 0m3.116s

>time wget http://cif.rochester.edu/~alex/mirror/Park_auto_no _driver.wmv
real 0m10.941s

Nah, that's M$ parking, HERE'S linux parking

[potus98]

Check out this high-speed parking manuever!

[obligatory /. MS bash complete]

Re:Nah, that's M$ parking, HERE'S linux parking

[confused one]

That was Excellent. Had to literally LOL... People looking at me now, must go back to work : )

Re:Nah, that's M$ parking, HERE'S linux parking

[AndroidCat]

They ruined the joke. The other car is supposed to be a huge bargemobile driven by an old fart.

Young person says "Yes! That's what you can do when you're young and fast!"
Other driver proceeds to back into the spot anyway and cube the little toy. "That's what you can do when you're old and rich."

Re:Nah, that's M$ parking, HERE'S linux parking

[drinkypoo]

I remember seeing some chick flick or something where two young girls dart into a parking space and say something to this older gal to the effect of "Face it, we're younger and faster than you" and then the lady runs into their car and says "Face it, I'm older and have more insurance."

Re:Nah, that's M$ parking, HERE'S linux parking

[rikkards]

I am slightly embarrassed to say that was Fried Green Tomatoes. One of the more man friendly chick flicks.

Re:Nah, that's M$ parking, HERE'S linux parking

[Ulven]

Fried Green Tomatoes is a chick flick? /me takes it off his shelf.

Re:Nah, that's M$ parking, HERE'S linux parking

[__aafutm5472]

There's a good chance this is a guy by the name of Russ Swift (Home page). He holds the record for that particular flavor of parking -- fitting into a spot with just 6 inches of space on either end of the car. There are cool videos on his homepage, and he's also on Jeremy Clarkson's "No Limits" video(No Limits)

Re:Nah, that's M$ parking, HERE'S linux parking

[rikkards]

I know! But if you look at the common things:
1. Two girls grow up together and go through good and bad times
2. 1 girl dies of some disease (usually cancer)
3. bittersweet ending

Re:Nah, that's M$ parking, HERE'S linux parking

[jelle]

I saw in a documentary that there is a guy in hollywood who does that for a living. He's the only one who can skid-parallel-park within inches of other cars without making dents. He's done it for all the movies in which you may have seen it. Forgot his name though...

It's always a good idea...

[merikus]

...to post a direct link to a video on a /. main story. It lets us crash their server that much faster!

Re:It's always a good idea...

[Call Me Black Cloud]

I guess you didn't try to download the video then. They have some serious bandwidth - it's downloading at full speed.

Re:It's always a good idea...

[confused one]

YOu know they've got their act together when they can survive a slashdotting... while serving up a 3+ Mb video.

for when the site gets slashdotted

[haluness]

park.wmv

Re:for when the site gets slashdotted

[Mick Ohrberg]

Geez, look around a little before posting things like this, wouldya? *sigh*

Re:for when the site gets slashdotted

[haluness]

and for what should I be looking for?

Re:for when the site gets slashdotted

[Mick Ohrberg]

Several posts already indicating that the site seems to be easily withstanding the slashdot onslaught.

Oh and by the way, the fact that your post was prior to all the other is beside the point. *inserts foot in mouth, egg on face etc etc* I can only claim lack of caffeine. Or excitement over Cassini-Huygens or something. Sorry.

Re:Strange pull

[EvilTwinSkippy]

Only a geek would design a car that parked itself.

I personally prefer parking with a friend. Especially parallel parking.

Yeah I tried this once

[Stevyn]

I tried this with my laptop running gentoo once. It worked pretty well until I hit a wifi hotspot and it found 3 updates and started compiling for 8 hours.

Re:Yeah I tried this once

[EvilTwinSkippy]

Would have been ok too, but they just unrapped yet another release of glibc...

Re:Yeah I tried this once

[MrSpiff]

It worked pretty well until I hit a wifi hotspot and it found 3 updates and started compiling for 8 hours.

actually, if you happen to come across a HP Proliant 585 (4 x 2.2Ghz Opteron), you can install Gentoo in a little more than an hour :)

Would the results have been different I wonder

[Timesprout]

If a team of women had written the software ? hmmmm

Notice how much space is available to park the car

[forged]

I wonder if this will also work in tight spaces, where you end-up inching your way through.

Nice, but...

[crymeph0]

When will cars be able to drive themselves down the freeway? Anyone heard anything about research in that area? That would be really cool.

Re:Nice, but...

[the Luddite]

Well, most cars are already driven unattended on the highway. I mean between the navi systems, cell phones, PDSs, shaving, lipstick, and other recrationial activities (Woohoo!) that I have seen, most cars pretty much DO drive themselves!

At the very least, they are already smarted than the people driving them appear to be...

Re:Nice, but...

[LighthouseJ]

I was going to spread some mod points around this topic, but I'll respond.

Both Honda and Chrysler are doing tests. On TV, I also saw an engineering school equip a Silhouette minivan with a computer that could drive the minivan. They did a test from the east coast to the west coast, and the car drove itself about 97.5% of the way across the country. A couple guys rode along in case, say, they encountered freshly paved areas with no lines on the road.

The minivan was equipped with color cameras and image recognition to find lines in the road, other vehicles and such. The main one was behind the rear-view mirror. It's harder because you can't use ultrasonic. They had to come up with algorithims to detect lines in the road. You'd need some method of differentiating flat yellow lines from a black background.

Re:Nice, but...

[Xerotope]

I think you're referring to Carnegie Mellon University's NavLab project. (I'd post a link, but a transformer blew up yesterday, so the RI server is down... check http://www.ri.cmu.edu in the next day or so) The technology for autonomous highway driving is there... it's the liability laws that are going to stop it from being commercially availible for the next couple decades.

Re:Nice, but...

[cloudmaster]

Several of the higher-end cars already have devices that will follow the car ahead of you at a pre-determined distance (which, unfortunately for the people who appearently drive where I'm driving, isn't configurable to be 8"). That's about all that's involved in driving down the freeway - keep moving but don't crash into the car ahead of you.

Yep - good call..

[oz_ko]

Write an article about linux parking your car - post the video in WMV format...

Re:Yep - good call..

[VC]

mplayer. You have nothing to fear from wmv.

Insightful??

[JulianOolian]

It's a bloody final year project for chrissakes. The ideas are all there but the thing isn't really meant to be as refined as anything you'd find in production.

Give the guy a break! Sheesh!

And while they're at it...

[Last_Available_Usern]

...can they also add a subroutine that will automatically slow down your car when you pass an accident?

Parking meters

[GillBates0]

$699.00 per minute.
Only 25c, 10c and 5c coins accepted.
Meters enforced 24 hours.
Violators will be towed courtesy McBride Breakdown Services.

Re:Funny, but if you look at the lines on the grou

[Anonymous Coward]

Jesus people, it's a fucking demonstration video. They aren't -cheating- with the lines, they just assumed it was so ridiculously obvious that they are SIMULATING the side of a city street that it wouldn't be necessary to make special mention of the different lines.

And in other research...

[lewko]

They're working on a really lame other project using a Commodore 64 machine to control random lane-changing without indicating of every bloody Volvo on the roads,

More information

[Creamsickle]

One of the students on the project is actually the kid of an old friend of mine. In case you're wondering, the Linux system they are using is a custom system based on the Gentoo-HA (High Availability) distribution. In addition to parking cars, the optimized P4 box is also allegedly used for many games of Quake. :)

Also, according to my friend, large quantities of pizza were consumed as an essential part of this project.

Works great until

[suso]

That works great until some asshole cuts into your spot before you can get into it. I'm sure getting out of your car will give them the cue.

Re:Works great until

[Gordonjcp]

Fuck 'em, it's a Volvo. What's going to come off worst? (Hint - they weigh 2 tonnes for a reason)

Interesting, but dangerous

[grunt107]

Self-driving vehicles (destination by traveler, drive by vehicle) are interesting, but the more removed people get from the driving responsibilities, the worse they actually drive - inattention AND inability both are rising. With the 'self-park', people will now lose another driving skill. That important? Not really - I have rarely PP'd (parallel-parked) - but I believe PPing gives important spatial vehicular training that helps in other driving areas.

Re:Interesting, but dangerous

[koreth]

Self-driving vehicles (destination by traveler, drive by vehicle) are interesting, but the more removed people get from the driving responsibilities, the worse they actually drive

Once the vehicles drive themselves, who cares? I've lost the ability to translate my high-level code into assembly language by hand, but I don't think I'll ever need to do that again, so I'm not losing sleep over it. If a particular driving skill is taken over (and done at least as well) by automation, then good riddance, the roads will probably be safer without a bunch of drunks and crazies weaving unpredictably back and forth.

Anyway, my guess is the first real self-driving will be on freeways, and people will still have to keep their driving skills up to snuff to get to the freeway and drive wherever they're going after they exit. I really doubt there'll be much degradation in driving skill if people are no longer forced to manually drive in a straight line for an hour with an occasional lane change to break the monotony. City street navigation is a much harder problem and I'm guessing it'll be a lot longer before we see it automated.

Re:Interesting, but dangerous

[drinkypoo]

I really doubt there'll be much degradation in driving skill if people are no longer forced to manually drive in a straight line for an hour with an occasional lane change to break the monotony.

What freeways have you been driving on, highway 10 through texas? Most of the time when people are on the freeway when they drive in a straight line for an hour they're doing something wrong, specifically not getting over to the right when they should be. People should be doing a lot more goddamn merging.

Re:Interesting, but dangerous

[EvilTwinSkippy]

Heck, any highway around Philly, if you try to drive straight you will eventually wind up in the shoulder. The left lane of 95 south of the Ben Franklin Bridge winds up the right lane after the merge with i-676, which after bridge street ends up BACK in the left lane.

The SureKill (i-76) has similar madness. If you stay right, you eventually run out of road. If you stay left you eventually run out of road. If you stay in the middle you wind up on the left, and then after US-1, you are back in the middle, and then on the Right.

Every one of those lane shifts requires complete attention. There are too many folks who either fail to negotiate it ahead of time and passive-agressively try to occupy your car's portion of the time-space continuum, or you get the moron in the canyanero who tries to blow by you at 120mph and shoehorn into the half an Austin-Mini between you and the car in front of your... at 60 mph.

Maybe in an Empty lot in Sweeden.....

[Anonymous Coward]

but in Boston, that spot would be so gone before the guy even had a chance to get his shirt off, let alone exit the car.

Re:Maybe in an Empty lot in Sweeden.....

[kilfarsnar]

That, and look at the size of that space! Even my girlfriend (sorry, honey) could get into that space! I'll buy it when it can get a 9' car into a 9' 4" space.

white cars only?

[harmanjd]

Does it only work if you park between two white cars?

Toyota

[pyreblade]

This is exciting and all, but the Japanese version of the Toyota Prius already does this.

Re:Toyota

[iggy3]

cool inventions 2003: Parking Space Invaders

Re:Toyota

[gearry]

If you RTFA, and then read this, you will see that what the two cars do is quite different. The Prius requires quite a bit of user interaction, whereas the system engineered with Volvo appears to require very little driver interaction, as well as the flexibility to be applied in vehicles with different steering systems.

Practical application

[Mordaximus]

If you can't parallel park, you shouldn't be licensed to drive.

But I can see a practical application of this device : Device determins if driver is an incompetent moron who should never have been issued a license, and if that is the case, automatically pull over, park and cut power to the engine.

Imagine the look on the asshole tailgater's face when upon pulling up within inches of your bumper, is denied control of his car, and pulls over to the side of the road (perfectly parked of course.)

Or the moron who is in such a rush that he thinks red lights are optional.

Or my personal pet peeve, the idiots who think signals are optional, and that everyone should just guess what their next move will be...

yup, I think I'd enjoy having the road to myself :)

Re:Practical application

[Cro Magnon]

What happens when there's no place to park? It wouldn't take long to fill up every available spot.

Re:Practical application

[sconest]

If you can't parallel park, you shouldn't be licensed to drive.

Here in Belgium, it's mandatory and part of the exam

Or my personal pet peeve, the idiots who think signals are optional, and that everyone should just guess what their next move will be...

Yeah, I see those a lot. On highways

Re:Practical application

[Mick Ohrberg]

Here in Belgium, it's mandatory...

When I did my driving test in Sweden back in the year 1991 AD, it was also part of the mandatory training, but on the test it was up to the testers' mood/whim to test you on it. My exam took about 20 minutes of very easy driving. A friend of mine was grilled for 40 minutes - and yes, we both passed on the first try.

Or my personal pet peeve, the idiots who think signals are optional...

...or the morons who start changing lanes, then signal once, as if to say "Oh yeah, in case you missed it - I just changed lanes...".

And yes, I was borned and raised in Sweden, but have been living in the Midwest since '97.

Re:Practical application

[KamuZ]

Well, in Mexico you don't even take an exam which includes parallel parking. In my case, i took a 2 weeks course for driving, they teach me how to park like that just 1 time (yes, just 1 time), they signed me a letter and with that, they gave me my license, of course, my dad and family are from Mexico City so they told me how to drive and park like that (in small cities like where i'm living right now everything is more slow, so more morons at the wheel), but yeah, i believe parallel driving needs to be a MUST in a driving test. I mean, i know several people which can't park like that... even in the traffic law, it says you need to park and be no more than 30cm far from the street.

Re:Practical application

[sparkz]

And that's an excuse?
If you can't turn around quickly, you can't safely make a manoevure to get out of the way of an emergency vehicle - that's just one example.
Some health reasons are reasons why you shouldn't drive, not why you should be excused.

Re:Practical application

[StormyWeather]

Although I know you are joking, I'd be pretty pissed if I couldn't run a red light if like last week I had a tornado coming down a mile behind me and closing fast. Other drivers around here who haven't seen the damage potential from a tornado were just driving around like nothing was wrong. Me, I was hauling ass through red lights like mad to make it home to the cellar. Thank god it only briefly touched down. I still got home in my garage before the baseball sized hail knocked out my car windows.

Oh, here's the storm.
Turns out, that the hail was more likely to kill you than the tornado =/.

Car to driver: Dear driver, you are an incompetant moron, shutting down now. 3 seconds later, WHAM run over by an 18 wheeler with the brakes out.

I want one . . .

[TheLetterPsy]

Not the Volvo, not the Linux on P4, and most definitely not the shirtless guy. What I really want is the little leprechaun that is steering and pushing the pedals when the guy gets out of the car.

Yup, I just want the leprechaun.

Questions...

[Whispers_in_the_dark]

1) Who gets the bill when the system screws up and slams the nice $200K car instead of parking neatly next to it?

2) How does the system deal with engine/linkage issues. Cars don't provide smooth power/steering at all times. If the engine is out of tune or has a catchy throttle, can the system deal with that as well as/better than a human?

3) How is it told where to park? It would have been nice if it was clear in the video what the driver did to tell it that. The article alludes to some sort of analysis system for this, but I like pretty pictures. ;)

Pretty nifty anyway!

Re:Questions...

[Ryne]

I'm a student at that university. Not at that department though so I don't know very much about the project.

However, I saw another demo that had a short explanation. It has three cameras on the side of the car that can spot a free slot. So, when you want to park you say that to the computer and then you drive slowly past the line of cars. When the computer finds a slot that it deems is large enough it tells you to get your hands/feet off the wheel and pedals. Then it proceeds to park.

It actually looked pretty userfriendly and nice. I don't know how small gaps it can manage though.

Re:Questions...

[HokieJP]

2) How does the system deal with engine/linkage issues. Cars don't provide smooth power/steering at all times. If the engine is out of tune or has a catchy throttle, can the system deal with that as well as/better than a human?

The same way a human does it, feedback control. i.e. You measure your acceleration, and you adjust the throttle until you get the value you want. With the right control system, the computer should be able to do a better job than a person. This is actually a famous problem in controls, and has been much studied. I was a bit disappointed that the article talked more about the mechanics of interfacing with the car, but maybe they consider the controller a "solved problem"

3) How is it told where to park? It would have been nice if it was clear in the video what the driver did to tell it that. The article alludes to some sort of analysis system for this, but I like pretty pictures. ;)

It looks like it just scans to the car's right for a space large enough to hold the car. It alerts you when it finds one, and you probably just hit a button to "go to most recent available space". Since this is a prototype, it probably doesn't have a very sophisticated UI.

Re:Questions...

[drinkypoo]

1. Hopefully, the owner.
2. I don't know if this volvo has both characteristics but these days most of the more expensive cars have electric power steering which will draw on the battery if RPMs aren't up to keep the alternator pumping out enough power to run it, and they also have drive by wire - on my car which has ordinary sequential fuel injection the throttle drives a cable which opens the butterfly on the throttle body and a throttle position sensor tells the car how open it is so it can control fuel delivery. On drive by wire cars there is a potentiometer on the gas pedal, there's a servo on the butterfly, and both fuel and air delivery are controlled by the computer, hence the computer can more or less guarantee a range of RPMs.
3. I don't know how this system works, but see cool inventions 2003: Parking Space Invaders linked from comment #9570304.

Re:Questions...

[Whispers_in_the_dark]

The same way a human does it, feedback control. i.e. You measure your acceleration, and you adjust the throttle until you get the value you want. With the right control system, the computer should be able to do a better job than a person. This is actually a famous problem in controls, and has been much studied. I was a bit disappointed that the article talked more about the mechanics of interfacing with the car, but maybe they consider the controller a "solved problem"

I appreciate the detailed article. I will confess up front that I am going to reply without reading the entire thing, but from what I read (could grasp quickly without resorting to formulae) it appears to describe a normal feedback system augmented by visual sensors.

The thing is, AFAIK, that people usually don't handle controls the same way a machine does. People (although my statistical sample is the smallish one -- myself) will remember how a machine reacts to their inputs and (attempt to) compensate when dealing with those controls. In addition to sight I also rely on hearing and vibration to tell me what the machine is doing. Machines, even ones sophisticated enough to employ a visual augmentation, don't have those (occasionally critical) advantages.

As an example, my minivan has a sticky accelerator first thing in the morning. I know this, so to make sure it doesn't jump when I try to back out I rev the engine a bit while still in park to clear the stickiness. It doesn't happen after the first start of the day but it has become ritual. A computer, unless employing a learning system or very well programmed, won't act the same way. A feedback system would normally just keep applying force until it got an expected reaction (motion). In my sticky-peddal problem the computer may very well have just rammed the car ahead/behind before realizing it got more force than expected. If I find excessive resistance in the pedal I don't go any further unless I'm SURE I'm in Park.

Maybe at the millisecond resolution computers can handle the feedback and the my sticky pedal issue isn't a problem (not being in that particular field of computing I wouldn't know). But I suspect those sorts of tactile-memory skills wouldn't transfer easily or well to a machine.

OTOH, I could be completely off base. It wouldn't be the first time! :)

Re:Questions...

[HokieJP]

What you're describing with the sticky pedal is a classic problem with control systems. Because friction acts more strongly on a stationary object than a moving one, you often need a big force to start something moving, which can cause you to push the system way too hard (this is called integrator windup, a reference is here).

There are definitely techniques to overcome this (the gist of it is, you tell the controller to increase the force slowly until you're out of the 'sticky' range). I agree that it is hard to make a machine "learn" this kind of behavior in advance, and so it is at a disadvantadge in that respect. On the other hand, the machine probably has a quicker response time than a person, and it generally has access to more precise inputs. For instance, the machine can use a sensor (I think they are using ultrasound in this project) to determine its precise distance from the other cars, whereas a human just has a general sense. So even if it gets itself into trouble by pushing the pedal to hard, it can hit the brake much more quickly. Of course, stamping the gas and then the brake is not necessarily a desirable way to park your car. The solution? Spray some WD-40 on the accelerator I guess.

Re:Questions...

[wskellenger]

1) Who gets the bill when the system screws up and slams the nice $200K car instead of parking neatly next to it?

An interesting question. People familiar with Adaptive Cruise Control (ACC), which will automatically slow your car down when the cruise is set to maintain a preset following distance from the slower-moving car in front of you, might ask the same question. The answer in the ACC case is the you as the driver must always have your car under control. In this case, it sounds as though the driver is completely removed from the loop, as the system uses hydraulic actuators to steer each front wheel. I doubt that in this configuration you could ever sell this system to the public...

2) How does the system deal with engine/linkage issues. Cars don't provide smooth power/steering at all times. If the engine is out of tune or has a catchy throttle, can the system deal with that as well as/better than a human?

This is handled the same way that traction control will handle it -- by using the car's electronic throttle. The S60 (and most new cars) does not have a conventional cable-actuated throttle... It uses a sensor at the throttle pedal and a servo at the throttle itself. By requesting an engine ouptut torque of "x", the engine computer will automatically select the position of the throttle. My guess is that this team did get a little help from Volvo in Sweden to make this happen. They'd need to know what CAN messages to send out in order to get the engine computer to listen to them. (normally this right is reserved for the ABS/traction control controller)

3) How is it told where to park? It would have been nice if it was clear in the video what the driver did to tell it that. The article alludes to some sort of analysis system for this, but I like pretty pictures. ;)

There is another link that give a little more insight. It seems that the driver initiates a "scan" as he approaches a vacant parking space. As the car passes the space, the system determines whether or not the space is large enough. If so, the system alerts the driver and the driver brings the car to a stop. He activates the "park" command and the system takes over.

Re:shirtless?

[Uninen]

Who the hell thought it would be a good idea for that guy to not wear a shirt during their promo?

A Swede.

Great, but

[panurge]

Having just had a wing mirror damaged by a moron, the question I have is, how do we force all the morons who can't park to use this technology? It's like parking sensors; they work well but they don't stop the other guy reversing into you. I'm all in favor of freedom, but a number of classes of drivers - soccer moms in SUVs, the white baseball cap brigade and anyone with a gun rack in their pickup would surely benefit from compulsory parking sensors linked to the brakes. In fact, they'd benefit from permanently engaged brakes...rant ends

My thoughts

[mm0mm]

Looks like it's working well.

Living in Los Angeles, I may feel much safer if cars on LA freeways are driven by Penguins rather than by typical LA drivers, or in other words, by a bunch of illegal immigrants from all over the world with a "valid" driver's license.

If Windows powered it...

[Anonymous Coward]

Clippy would say: "Looks like you are trying to parallel park. This feature is not currently installed. Please insert the Microsoft Parking CD."

Future Car concepts

[Colourspace]

I see a lot of people scoffing here but were on the brink of the next revolution in personal transport here and nobody seems to be taking notice. Just how long will it be before cars are wirelessly networked together, an onboard PC on each vehicle doing black-box, GPS navigation, localised proximity sensing and collision avoidance, parking, MP3 and entertainment etc - All of which we have the technology for now (but have not quite driven the cost out of yet) When these vehicles are networked via a mesh system to a basestation this could be used to the greater good for traffic networking (ie using data to redirect away from traffic hotspots) and accident/emergency uses. Of course there's privacy issues too - all of which need to be discussed. But if I see another 'linux won't crash' comment...

Re:Future Car concepts

[EvilTwinSkippy]

We already have such a system.

It's called a bus.

Re:Future Car concepts

[geoffspear]

When some script kiddie can wirelessly take control of the collision-avoidance system of random drivers' cars and crash them into mine, I for one won't want to be driving anymore.

Of course, at that point car insurance will cost more than your car, because the insurance companies sure as hell aren't going to trust the computers.

Re:Future Car concepts

[Colourspace]

interesting point - which is all I wanted to see more of. I'm now off to mow some people down in my petrol driven car cos I've fallen asleep at the wheel ;)

Re:Future Car concepts

[cloudmaster]

Hooray for "the future" courtesy of the 1950s!

That self-driving thing will happen just about the time our fusion-powered flying cars arrive.

Re:Future Car concepts

[zCyl]

the insurance companies sure as hell aren't going to trust the computers.

Apparently you haven't met many of the drivers out there on the road...

Re:Future Car concepts

[geoffspear]

The problem, as far as insurance is concerned, is that it's easy to charge higher rates to people with records of unsafe driving and accidents. Keeping track of which software version is running on each person's car gets a bit trickier.

Of course, they'd probably just modify their policies so that they provide no coverage when a human driver isn't in control of the vehicle, at which point it would be illegal to use the cars in most (all?) states, as driving uninsured is illegal.

Re:Future Car concepts

[kefkakiller]

Actually most of these things "wirelessly networked together, an onboard PC on each vehicle doing black-box, GPS navigation,... MP3 and entertainment etc" are already being done. www.mp3car.com

Re:Future Car concepts

[mamba-mamba]

Actually, the development I'm waiting for is the "raft-up" concept. The idea is that you would approach the car in front of you, hit a button that says "raft-up" and your car would then take over throttle and brakes to tailgate the car in front of you and use a control system to maintain distance. This could safely allow MUCH higher traffic density on freeways. I envision the driver still steering the car.

Realistically, no system like this will ever be fielded in the US. They'll work on it until it is totally idiot-proof and THEN it will appear in full glory.

MM
--

Re:Future Car concepts

[sparkz]

This could safely allow MUCH higher traffic density on freeways
No it wouldn't.

You're assuming human control - I agree 100% (99 computers + one human driver == 1 pileup); given that assumption, the generally accepted "safe distance" for a human driving at 70mph is 2 seconds; most drivers tend to give much less of a gap to the driver in front. (Leave that big a gap, and someone will fill it)
Your idea would actually allow for a potentially safer road, but certainly result in a much lower traffic density.

Re:Future Car concepts

[mamba-mamba]

I'm not sure if I understand what you are saying. Which means maybe I didn't explain my idea very well.

I was envisioning a control system which could measure following distance and speed, and take over control of the brakes and throttle to maintain a very close following distance. This would, in effect, create a raft of tightly packed cars moving almost as one. It seems to me that this would increase the traffic density dramatically.

Maybe the simpler way to look at it (which I think is your point) is that collision avoidance technology in cars could provide increased density OR increased safety or some combination of the two, simply because the system always pays attention and has very short reaction times.

I'm too lazy to do any calculations, but I'm sure you could get down to less than 1 carlength even at 70+ MPH.

There would normally be no danger of these cars crashing into each other. But if an anomaly occurred, for example if a car travelling in a direction opposite to the raft crossed the center line and hit the lead car, several cars in the front of the raft might not be able to stop fast enough, even when braking to the point of impending lockup.

There is also the problem of how you get in and out of the raft safely.

MM
--

Re:Future Car concepts

[KurdtX]

Well if you live in San Diego, they've been working on the sensing/networking for about 10 years... of course, it doesn't seem like they've made any progress, as my commute has only gotten longer.

And you can already buy a car (at least here in the USA) with all of the rest of that today (adaptive cruise control, reactive braking) - they just don't call it a PC (but some still run Windows). Btw, you forgot news feeds and gaming - I think by entertainment you meant movies, which have been around longer than the minivan.

I don't think you've thought about this too much, or are just trolling.... basestation? Why? And what sort of privacy issues are you risking by having your car publish that you're travelling 80mph?

Re:Future Car concepts

[Colourspace]

Kurdtx you forgot to RTFC ;) - My main point was the amount of trolling/offtopic posting others were doing and not encouraging a serious discussion on something that truly does affect us all. The technology I gave was a broad example - I dont think it would be a windows PC based thing etc etc... And of course I mentioned that yes, a lot of these things are available just not integrated anough yet. 'Basestation' - I dunno? Widget? Black Box? Whatever - it was not my intention to troll but to get more comments back like yours. Its something that needs to be talked about. Rant over.

road rage

[areve]

What happens when someone parks in your space? Does your car find another space? Would it be possible to get a red flashy light for the front too?

This reminds me of...

[fgb]

The system previewed in BMW Magazine a few months ago. As you drive by the parking space, it measures how big the space is and lets you know if the car will fit. If you tell it to park, it will take over the steering and acceleration. You retain control of the brakes so that you can stop it if necessary. I believe the article said that it would be available in the 6 series in a couple of years.

I don't believe they recommended that you got out of the car before the parking manuever was completed.

Re:This reminds me of...

[cloudmaster]

It was clearly very hot in there. It was either "get out" or "strip completely down". While I wasn't pleased with "shirtless guy gets out of car before parking", it was far preferable to "naked guy gets out of car after parking"...

Re:This reminds me of...

[drinkypoo]

Well perhaps you didn't read the blurb, but there is a Pentium 4 in that car... If he had stayed in there any longer he might have died of heatstroke, I don't think he'd even have time to shake his trousers off.

Re:This reminds me of...

[cloudmaster]

It's a good thing he didn't have my mp3 system (yes, I had an mp3-playing custom-rolled computer in my car long before "everyone" was doing it) in there, then. I used a Cyrix chip, and nothing gets hotter than a Cyrix. I think that was even in theri marketing material - "we might run slower than advertised, but you can heat your house with our chips". The only thing keeping me from burning up is the massive cabin size in my 1980 Caprice (which is for sale now, assuming the newly built engine fires up this week).

Upside down?

[beders]

Why is it upside down? Made me feel ill.

Re:Notice how much space is available to park the

[SilveRo_kun]

Dude, this is a student project.... It can be improved a lot if a company works on it. Actually, the japanese already came up with this

What about pedestrians?

[defile]

The hardest and most annoying part about parallel parking for me is constantly checking all of my blind spots to make sure that I'm not about to mangle a pedestrian/stick my car out into oncoming traffic.

How does the parking system handle that, I wonder.

Re:What about pedestrians?

[Iamthefallen]

It doesn't, that's why you control the accelerator.

Why does "Linux-powered" matter?

[Junks Jerzey]

Okay, it's Slashdot, I know. But it's not like (1) Linux is doing all the work here, or (2) there's something special about Linux that makes it an integral part of the solution. It could just as well have been Linux or Windows 95 or MS-DOS, really.

(I honestly don't mean this as a flame. I like Linux. But I don't know what good it does to say things like "Panavision-Powered Camera Shoots Oscar Winning Film.")

Re:Why does "Linux-powered" matter?

[hughk]

This is a real-time system with definite consequences if it goes wrong (dented fender?). A system that may lockup is out of the question. It is useful for others to know that Linux is available as a solution for control-applications.

Re:Why does "Linux-powered" matter?

[Sloppy]

It's Linux-powered, because the NUPSA (non-uniform parking space access) mods in the 2.6 kernel are what allows it to park two cars at the same time, in parallel. If you tried that with Windows 95, one car would have to stop while the other car is parking, because of "street contention."

Re:Why does "Linux-powered" matter?

[Junks Jerzey]

This is a real-time system with definite consequences if it goes wrong (dented fender?). A system that may lockup is out of the question. It is useful for others to know that Linux is available as a solution for control-applications.

But you haven't answered the question. There's no guarantee that Linux won't lockup, just as there's no guarantee that Windows XP won't lockup (I've never had either one lockup).

Re:Why does "Linux-powered" matter?

[hughk]

Wrong question. The question was "Why be interested in Linux" for this RT application. I don't do real-time now, but many years ago I did and was acutely aware of interrupt latency, context switch times and the problems of priority inversion.

The Linux kernel has one thing going for it, and that is transparency and it is relatively easy to tailor down. XP isn't even on the same planet. CE could have been but losing the memory management goes back to the bad old days of RSX-11S where one misbehaved app can kill the system. This is why we used watchdogs. Interestingly enough, Dave Cutler wrote RSX-11S as well as the NT series of operating systems.

Prague

[Alif]

Can it park in Prague?

Re:Funny, but if you look at the lines on the grou

[Diabolical]

Gee.. i dunno, perhaps because the parkinspace they tested this out on was layed out with perpendicular spaces instead of parallel, and they wanted to show how it worked with parallel parking space?

How about the other way?

[fikx]

I'd liek it to be able to park in a parking lot...no, it's not hard to park in a normal space. I'm just lazy. If I could have it slowly cruise the lot and put itself in a space, I'd be happy.

And, while I'm at it, let's make it an automagic un-parking car. Instead of pressing the button on my keychain and hearing "beep BEEP!", how about having the car slowly roll up to me as I walk out?

I know most cars would be a royal pain to get this to work, but cars like the prius are already wired up so they can start themselves...could it work?

Nothing new

[dknj]

This has been in the works since the early 90s. I was watching some morning news show sometime around 1992 or 1993 and they showed a van that could park itself without requiring a driver inside. They claimed it would be on the market by 1998 at the latest. I waited and never heard anything else. I was only in 4th or 5th grade at the time so I never followed up on the company that showed it. Ah well, its good to see its finally making it to the market 12 years later

dk-

Re:Nothing new

[ViolentGreen]

Toyota demonstrated one several years ago.

I think it will be a while before it takes off in the states if it ever does. The biggest problem (assuming that it works correctly) is Insurance companies. Whose fault would it be if your car hit another car or person while it was automatically parking? Will insurance companies increase your rates just because you have this feature in your car?

This just seems like a huge can of worms that will take a lot of time (and law suits) to sort out.

Re:Nothing new

[caswelmo]

Seems like a pretty easy thing to track & represent statistically.

Agent: Let's see, last year cars that have the "automatic parking" feature experienced a 27% lower chance of claiming parking related insurance money. Okay, a little adjustment here. "Hey everybody! If you insure an auto-parker with us, we'll give you a 5% discount on your rate."

Seems easy enough.

Re:Nothing new

[ViolentGreen]

Well one problem with that is that there are no statistics to start with. I suppose they could start with no rate change but that doesn't seem like it would be in their best interests.

And what happens if it is the other way around. What if the cars have 27% more accidents? Do they raise the insurance of everyone whose car has this feature? But then you have people who have the feature on the car and don't use it and it becomes a driver safty issue and not a car feature.

I'm not arguing one way or another. I'm not even sure the above is coherent. I just think there's a long way to go before this is accepted.

Not Linux-powered for Pete's sake

[KeithH]

It get's pretty tiresome seeing "linux-powered" this and that. I'm as big a fan of Linux as the next guy, but Linux is just the O/S. Stories like this make it sound like Linux is controlling the car. It's *not*. It's controlled by somebody else's software.

It's not even an embedded Linux story. It's just another neat PC application that could just as easily be running on a Mac.

Re:Funny, but if you look at the lines on the grou

[ballpoint]

And both non-existing cars were ma/parked in the fourth dimension.

Cool...

[TwistedSpring]

Nice tricks, I quite like the concept, but I'd never trust my car to park itself, I sure couldn't just walk off like Captain Naked did.

Plus, I'm a firm believer in the fact that IF YOU CANNOT PARK YOUR CAR, YOU SHOULD NOT BE BLOODY DRIVING. This system would, however, be excellent for teaching learner drivers - especially the guided-steering incarnation of it (where it shows you how to steer and lets you do the steering, rather than doing the steering itself).

Pshoa.

[Mr_Icon]

If it could really park by itself, it would have to be able to do all of the following:

• Roam the parking lot for 20 minutes looking for a spot, with windows rolled down, blaring bad techno at the surrounings.
• Predatorily follow someone walking along the parking lot in the hopes that they will get in the car and pull out, and mouth them off in anger when realizing that they just wanted to pick up their wallet left in the car.
• Know not to park next to the door-dinging Canyonero.
• Mouth off at the "ass-clown in his fucking Porsche" who parked diagonally across two parking spaces.
• Yell "WHAT THE FUCK! THAT WAS MINE!" at the soccer mom who just pulled into the available space that you have spotted while four rows across and have been navigating to it ever since.
• Drop into neutral and rev up the engine behind the two old ladies who don't know any better to fucking get off the road.
• Bitterly bitch at the handicapped people for wasting perfectly good parking spaces that are never taken anyway.
• Say "that's it, I'm taking the goddamn bus next time!" at least once every two minutes while still circling the lot.
• Finally find a parking space after 30 minutes of circling, parking with the front wheels over the "absolutely no parking" line.
• Find that someone double-parked you upon your return, and be able to pull out over the curb, nearly leaving your exhaust pipe behind you.

Until then, don't talk to me about self-parking cars.

Re:Pshoa.

[iNetRunner]

This page here used to have some pictures of this system parking.. (Too bad it's currently bandwith exhausted.. Some tweeb posted big big pictures..) And beleave me.. finding "a parking spot" would be easy.

Re:Pshoa.

[mdielmann]

You missed the part about keying the ass-clown's Porsche...no scratches that way, my ass.

The reason why linux

[pagaman]

I take it , if he put windows on it, it would crash ;)

The gap is huge

[Alexis de Torquemada]

I don't want to belittle their achievements, but the parking gap looks only slightly smaller than the Chicxulub Crater.

Re:Strange pull

[WormholeFiend]

Because geeks are smart.

Everyday around here, I see a lot of non-geeks parallel-park between two cars, as we call it, "by ear".

(backing up) *bom*
(forward) *bom*
(backing up) *bom*
(forward) *bom*

Where the rubber hits the road - snow

[sittingbull]

So how does the system compensate when the wheels slip like if the car is on snow -- do the wheels slip and park the car halfway into the space. Good starts and better marketing are always done in ideal circumstances. -SB

Re:Where the rubber hits the road - snow

[Knacklappen]

So how does the system compensate when the wheels slip like if the car is on snow

They are using the rotational velocity of the wheels to integrate the travelled distance. Modern cars have sensors in all four wheels to detect and prevent slip and blocked brakes. Using all four wheel sensors together with known engine speed, one can calculate the car's current position (given you know the tire diameter more or less accurately, but that you have to know for determining car speed, anyway).

Not creative enough...

[morgdx]

Wouldn't it be better if, instead of parallel parking, the car just circled the block?

You wouldn't even need to find a space, and you wouldn't have to feed a meter!

Wouldn't it be great if all cars did that?

Oh wait...

Re:Strange pull

[Dever]

you're obviously not a geek then.

Scary video

[billcopc]

Dude, wear a shirt! These guys should have a computer that DRIVES the car too, because these little gino twits with their neon-ridden honda civics are the bane of my existence.

But seriously, I could have parked a school bus in that spot, it is HUGE compared to what you can expect in the city. Puh-leeze. Parallel parking requires practice/skill/functional-synapses.

Lately the city wankers have been replacing parallel spots with slant spots, it's a bit weird when you first see it, but you can park a dozen cars in slant, where only 5-6 used to fit in parallel, and they only jut out a few feet more which isn't a problem around here. They easier to get in/out of, and they make it easy for meter maids to grab your license plate :P

dual standards?

[slashjames]

Yesterday we had this article about reducing building electrical use with XML. Everyone jumped on it as playing up the fact that it used XML to implement the solution.

Here, we have a automatic car parking computer that plays up the fact it uses Linux as part of the solution. If it was using PalmOS or WindowsCE (or another non-open source OS), everyone would be up in arms.

What difference does it make how something was done, but for the fact it works? Granted, this car parking computer looks like it has quite a bit of refinement to go through before it'll work in the real world, but is nonetheless interesting. Insurance reasons, not technical, will probably be what kill this project. If you engage it to parallel park your vehicle and it rams the vehicles in front and in back of you, the vendor will be liable because it was their system that malfunctioned. The user engaged it, expecting it to behave as advertised.

This will *really* help women!

[callipygian-showsyst]

On my to-do list is to go around with a video camera, take movies of women trying to parallel park their SUVs, and make a website "women-trying-to-parallel-park.com"

I'd better hurry before the self-parking car becomes a reality! It would allow women to put on their makeup, talk on the phone, yell at their baby *and* park their SUV all at the same time! What a better world that would be.

I guess the F-series Canyonero will be the first commercial vehicle to have this technology!

Previous attempts

[pr0nbot]

This is actually not the first video these guys have posted. It's been an ongoing project, and they've documented previous attempts also.

Here is footage of an early, MS-DOS based version. (Believe it or not MS-DOS is still used for many embedded systems.)

Frag Safely.

[SuperBanana]

In addition to parking cars, the optimized P4 box is also allegedly used for many games of Quake.

Does the server announce "frag safely?" and ask you if you remembered your helmet?

Gentoo based, hmm- do you have to compile your own gas?

It can park itself, but...

[thewiz]

what does it do while you're shopping / in a meeting / at work?

Puts a new twist on Grand Theft Auto; a car that takes itself for a joyride.

yup, and volvos are highly manueverable

[SuperBanana]

video is cool, but now try doing it in a real world situation where you've got 60% of that space

Yes, and most volvos have exceptionally small turning radii. I've parked a full-size volvo wagon in a space about one foot larger than the car.

I have to wonder if they just didn't bother trying with cars closer together in the interests of time and body panels(even with stop switches, something's gonna get scuffed), or if that's the closest the thing could handle.

Relax

[Bozdune]

Take a Valium. The post you're criticizing was being charitable. The turning radius that they chose was obviously way too gentle for a real situation, hence the huge parking space. And at the end of all this, the car didn't end up parallel to the curb. If I stack the deck and can't even win the hand, is that a proof of concept?

It was a cute senior project, they made a nice movie, and they graduated. Good for them. But this isn't a proof of anything.

Re:Relax

[dcsmith]

Strikes me as kind of odd for someone to imply I'm wound too tight when I was telling someone else to lighten up. Perhaps you speak a different English than I do, where words don't mean the same thing. Anyway...

I stand by my original post. You're essentially making the same statement as the parent did, and its just wrong.

Parking in a big space via Linux
is to
parking in the real world

what

downloading a 10K text file
is to
downloading Windows XP SP1.

Starting with one you'll eventually develop the capabilities needed for the other, but not by 5:00 today. It won't work as it, but its a reasonable start on the journey.

Re:Relax

[Bozdune]

Not odd at all. You're the one who got all PC on the parent, telling someone to lighten up who was actually being quite moderate with his criticism. But, since you insist, let's drill down on it. What is this a "proof of concept" (your words) for, exactly?

1) Sensor technology? Nope, been done.
2) Control systems for steering, throttle, brake? Nope, been done.
3) Putting it all together to autonomously navigate a vehicle? Nope, been done.
4) Doing something "via Linux" (whatever that means)? I doubt that Linux had much to do with the code that's running this thing, other than *not* providing hard-real-time response to interrupts, which makes it a questionable choice (for other than a student project) to begin with, but never mind.

No, this is just a cute little undergrad robotics project, and the kids probably learned a lot. Maybe their advisor even raised some money from Ford/Volvo for it. Kudos to everyone. But there is nothing new here.

Now, if the car had been autonomously parked in a really tight space, as the parent poster pointed out, that would have been much more impressive. It certainly would have impressed the hell out of my wife, who flunked her Bermuda driving test three times (parallel-parking in a space just a bit longer than the car). However, it still wouldn't have proved much, other than someone took the time (as these folks clearly did not) to work out an algorithm to do it.

As far as your analogy is concerned ("parking in the real world"), the idea that such a system would ever be trusted in the real world is really far-fetched to begin with. Sensors fail, computers freeze up, etc. What manufacturer would accept liability for failure? Is there someone lying down behind the car? Is one of the parked cars about to move, or moving? What about the blind guy about to intersect our path who isn't in sensor range yet, but we better nail the brake NOW or our momentum will kill him? How about the car behind us that just changed lanes and has only realized in the last few milliseconds that we are backing into a space, and we better stop NOW so he has more distance to react? And so on.

I'll buy you a beer, that's better than Valium. Peace.

Answers

[MarcQuadra]

1. You get the bill, or your insurance company does. Your insurance comapny has to work it out from there. It will be nice to watch the papers fly as huge auto-makers battle huge insurance conglomerates though. I assume that insurance will consider this a liability and charge extra for it for some time.

2. It probably deals badly with badly-acting cars. I know my car often leaps a foot or more when switching from reverse to drive, but I would also assume that if the car is far-enough out of tune the system will be deactivated to prevent fender-benders.

3. Apparently it chooses where to park by choosing the first spot LARGE ENOUGH TO FIT TWO CARS.

Re:Answers

[caswelmo]

So what happens if you're driving down the road, the tire flies off & hits a parked car? That isn't really any different from the parking thing. They are both functions the car is meant to perform (rolling vs. parking) & they both caused damage because the vehicle didn't perform as spec'ed. So who pay's in that case? You or the insurance company?

I'm a bit ashamed to say that I don't know the answer to this question myself. I should. Regardless, I think the two situations would be covered in the same way. And rates would be adjusted depending on whether the auto-parking feature caused more or less insurance claims.

Re:Answers

[karnal]

Your insurance company would pay for the damage caused, but you'd pay for it through a thing called "premium increase".

Should be the other way around

[Civil_Disobedient]

When I lived in Boston, the (unwritten rule) was reversed: if you parked with more than a meter separating you from the next car, you were taking up far too much space. If you have a block of people parking like this, you'll cut at least a couple of car lengths out of the block -- that's two or three residents who could have parked there if people had just learned how to parallel park better.

Re:Should be the other way around

[EvilTwinSkippy]

Granted, but nowhere in Europe would you find a street where there are as many cars as residents. Between cost and culture they just don't drive as much. As such, one car per family is more than enough.

Besides, if they have a garage the car is generally in it, not filled with crap.

Re:Should be the other way around

[Ironica]

Granted, but nowhere in Europe would you find a street where there are as many cars as residents. Between cost and culture they just don't drive as much. As such, one car per family is more than enough.

But housing is usually more dense, too. So a typical lot in a US subdivision is 50 ft across, while rowhousing in a European city may allot more like 25 ft. to a unit. So you have twice as many households in the same linear footage of street.

On the other hand, cars tend to be smaller and shorter in Europe, too...

works well with xine :)

[timothy]

That's what I used.

It's usually a crapshoot as to which of mplayer, xine, or vlc will play random video content, but very often at least one of them will ;)

timothy

Why parallel park when you can perpendicular park?

[TheMeddler]

Drive this Smart car and you can just nose in: Smart Car--

ALREADY BEEN DONE! Linux-powered car old news...

[ShitPissFuckCuntTits]

This is old news, I remember seeing a picture of a Linux-powered car that was always parked perfectly.

Oh, here'a a link.

Another way to do this ...

[scharkalvin]

I had another idea years ago on how to build a car that would be easy to park. Enable all four wheels to rotate 90 degrees and just slide into the parking space at right angles! (I'm surprised Q hasn't thought of this yet in a bond flick).

Re:Another way to do this ...

[Knacklappen]

I saw this on a Japanese TV-Show back then in the 80s... Guess it never went into production.

But check out last years EVOLVE project (more here), which included the design of autonomous wheel corners. With these babies, you can set all the wheels of your car to the same yaw angle and so translate your car, i.e. move it parallel to its lateral axis. Parallel parking becomes a piece of cake! Unfortunately, 90deg angles require a somewhat more sophisticated steering rack, so you can't just enter the parking space perpendicularily...

The Volvo

[Noose For A Neck]

Haven't you ever heard of "crumple zones"?

Re:The Volvo

[Gordonjcp]

Yup, my old Volvo 340 had crumple zones. In my case, it was a Ford Explorer that had been left in neutral with the handbrake off, and took off down the car park.

Damage to the Volvo - cracked tail light, deep gouges on rear bumper, towing eye slightly bent.

Damage to the Explorer - front bumper mountings broken, radiator wrapped around the engine block, door frames partially collapsed at the base of the "A" pillars, jamming both front doors shut. Fucked, basically.

Imagine a ...

[Cyburbia]

... never mind.

This reminds me on BBC title

[saigon_from_europe]

Title was "Self-parking car hits the shops"... Toyota probably did not like that title. BBC News

yakov smirnoff

[joexdestroyer]

in my country, car parks you.

obligatory

[Nspace13]

how long til someone learns to hack it. they stop by your car when your asleep and change a few numbers. the next day you park right into cars instead of next to them.

Toyota has done this

[drawfour]

Toyota has already done this, at least according to Wired. In August 2003, they said a Prius hybrid would be released in Japan in a month that did this. I heard Honda was doing something similar, but haven't heard any details.

Still, it's a cool project. Lots of drivers need all the help they can get. :)

it's linux powered...

[kwoff]

...but does it take XML?

Not many people realize...

[Anonymous Coward]

That when YOU don't wear YOUR seat belt, you are endangering others.

How is this?

When accidents occur, it is not always clear who is at fault. What is clear, however, is the financial and legal obligations of the person who is blamed. A damaged car costs money. A dead passenger can cost all the money you have, and land you in jail.

So, when you don't wear your seat belt, you are making it more likely that you will die in a crash, and hence increasing the potential legal ramifications for every other driver on the road.

I don't care how careful a driver you are, you are still financially and legally imperiling other drivers when you don't wear your seat belt.

The same goes for motor cycle helmets.

Please, don't be an asshole.

doh

[DaZedAdAm]

preview doesn't help if you don't actually read it...

that's supposed to be "Miss insertschoolnamehere"

Key point missed

[Rei]

The key thing that people seem to be missing about this article is not the automation, but the fact that this is a *Linux Powered Car*. Bush has been pushing hydrogen, but Linux power is really the power of the 21st century.

Of course, I probably won't switch - my XML powered car has been working just fine for now.

Re:Key point missed

[soft_guy]

my XML powered car has been working just fine for now

Don't you realize how much pollution is caused by burning XMLs?!

Re:Key point missed

[Knacklappen]

Nah, this car is *not* powered by Linux, only the computer that controls the parking system is. But it was a cool project...

Re:Key point missed

[Knacklappen]

Thank you Mr. I-wouldn't-recognize-sarcasm-or-a-joke-if-it-bit-m e-in-the-aft-end for your insightful comment.

The one thing I always enjoy is destroying other's sarcasms or irony by not responding to it, but just playing along. Seems like it worked once more. Gotcha..!

Re:Key point missed

[nutznboltz]

Is Linux a fundemental energy source or can it be traced back to solar energy?

LInux?

[Shipud]

RTFA'd, saw the movies. Where does it say Linux?

Linux powered?

[NanoGator]

I'm so glad this is Linux powered. I'm so sick of stale +5 funnies using the word 'blue'.

Re:uh oh

[sloanster]

hmm, why would you say that?

On the one hand, as you know, the majority of slashdotters use windozepeecees, and wmv makes sense for them.

On the other hand, the linux-using intelligentsia have no problem viewing wmv, quicktime, or any other relevant video format, as there are several linux media players to handle all audio and video formats of interest.

So bottom line, the video is accessible, and nobody is upset.

Already been streamlined

[crache]

I knew this looked familiar: Self-Parking Car Available In Japan

Linux Users gone wild

[Psymunn]

Alpha Gamma Delta?!? That's a sorority...
Okay, i'm fully confused. This is one of those indie irony, 'i'm not in a sorority and hate computers' kind of a thing isn't it... only explenation i can think of

What I really want

[mi]

Is the ability to move somebody else's already parked car back or forward a few feet. The security check should not allow movement to more than, say, 4 meters in either direction, nor speed higher than 1 km/h.

This would offer more parking space by providing the means to eliminate fragmentation.

I'm afraid, we'll see the space elevator sooner, though :-(

CALL FROM THE FRONT DESK!!

[lcsjk]

(Over company intercome)Could I have your attention? Someone left an unparked car out front with the motor still running. Did one of you engineers drive your wife's car again today?

DIY

[Doc Ruby]

According to Rebecca Hoyle, parallel parking is easy:

If:
P = r - w/2
G w + 2r + b
F w + 2r - fg

Perfection is when:
max((r + w/2)^2 + f^2, (r + w/2)^2 + b^2)
min(4r^2 (r + w/2 + k)^2)

Where:
Position (P) = Where to set up for the parallel park
Gap (G) = Determines if parking gap is large enough
Front of car (F) = Determines where front of car should go
r = turning radius of your car
w = width of your car
b = distance from back of car to point midway between axles
fg = gap you want left at the end
k = distance from curb where you end up

Proof of the theorem by construction is left as an excercise for the driver (/dev/park).

I find this amazing.

[Atario]

I had no problem getting it either -- a 3.8 meg video in about a minute, linked directly on the front page of Slashdot...from an overseas server. Now that's impressive. Screw the car, tell me how they pulled off that bandwidth!

LINUX Real-Time Target

[Knacklappen]

RTFA'd, saw the movies. Where does it say Linux?

Nowhere, that's how I got to the conclusion that this story must have been submitted by one of my colleagues (am associated to that department, myself)... :)

As far as I remember, the computer controlling the electro-servo hydraulics actually *is* powered by Linux. I suppose it was RTLT, because the students and several of my colleagues did much modelling in Simulink.

Well, there is some more information available, but this year's students did not as equally good a job of documenting their project as the 2003 students (Swedish only, though)...

That's great, but...

[Poseidon88]

I'll be really impressed when they can make it drive around the lot and find a space by itself.

(mod parent down..)

[Knacklappen]

...unless you are capable of realising that (s)he was joking...

:)

What a collosal waste of time....

[switcha]

C'mon, people. Why waste time with this shit? It's too late. The Segway is going to revolutionize the way we build cities and it's already here! Did you hear me? The way we build cities!

The car is Linux-powered...

[JessLeah]

...the video is Windows Media. How ironic.

Another Solution

[ocie]

I like this solution better.

Moo

[Chacham]

*music plays*

"KITT, go park."

"Michael!?!"

"KITT, did you want that oil change i promised you?"

not as bad as you think...

[Admael]

I haven't checked my sources, but I read somewhere that women actually have a higher capacity when it comes to mathematical ability, at the very least. (Not sure about mechanical engineering and the like... spatial things tend to land on the male side of the table.) There's a lot of factors working against mathematically minded females... one of them being the generalization that it's not an attractive position to be in. Which is not true. While the majority of guys that are attracted to a math geek will be geeks, there are many attractive and quite superior options out there.

How do I know? I'm a female. I'm enrolled in advanced calculus (and I'll bet you everything that I'll ace that class). We're not terribly prevalent, but man, it rocks to be us. :-)