Slashdot Mirror
Self-Parking Cars Coming To U.S.
Rio writes "Vehicles that are able to parallel park themselves while drivers sit and relax behind the wheel are coming to the United States, according to a Local 6 News report. New Toyota hybrid cars are now available in Britain with a $700 "parking assist" option. Local 6 news showed video of a driver sitting and allowing the car's steering wheel to turn on its own as it pulled into a tight parking spot on a London street. The reporter never touched the wheel as the car parked itself.Toyota says expect to see the technology pop up in the U.S. soon." Here is our previous coverage of their release in Japan.
Now, I can relax and not have to worry about learning how to parallel park in the city.
a tight parking spot You must be joking - you could fit a Hummer in that spot.
I'm surprised Toyota's insurers are allowing this. I imagine that every person who gets touched by one of those things moving on its own will sue for $millions.
dom
Smarter cars will just make dumber drivers.
Now my kids won't need drivers ed, and I'll save a bunch of money on my car insurance by switching to....
This has been available for several years now in Japan and other non-US markets. The reason why Toyota didn't release this tech in the US was fear of liability lawsuits in the US' sue-happy culture if something went wrong. Have they changed their stance on this?
-- Samir Gupta, Ph. D. Head, New Technology Research Group, Nintendo Co. Ltd., Kyoto, Japan.
Self-posting stories coming to Slashdot.
This involves the finely-tuned process of randomly selecting an article from two days ago, changing a few words around, and clicking "Submit."
Come to think of it, this has been going on for quite some time now.
Weeks of coding saves hours of planning.
So if this system screws up, mis-calculates the available space and dents a ferrari, is toyota going to pony up?
How soon will there be legal ads on TV asking if you have been injured by a self-parking car?
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
But is it smart enough to move itself when it senses the parking enforcement officer approaching with a ticket.
on driving tests to keep the completely brain-dead off the road will be eliminated. I hope examiners will demand that this feature be turned off for testing.
"To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
This is great and can't possibly get to the U.S. fast enough, but what it really needs to have is the feature for reversing the process so people can get out of parking spots (maybe it does, can't view the video on this computer). Any parking spot. I can't count how many times I've seen a driver so damn eager to get on the cell phone as soon as he gets in the car that he can't get out of the parking spot without tying up street traffic or parking lot traffic while driving with one arm and half a brain, 'cause god forbid one should put that stupid phone down and drive.
http://www.rootstrikers.org/
http://m90.org/index.php?id=13279
Shows a BMW parking itself
Now if this thing will have on board RFID to the parking meter or somehow has an arm to put quarters into the meter will be perfect.
In America, cars parallel park you.
In Soviet Russia, you parallel park cars!
Navicula hydraulica plena anguilarum est. Omnes castelli tuus nostri sunt. Ed elli avea del cul fatto trombetta.
Now if these cars would just park themselves far from where they drop me off, we can get rid of street parking in Manhattan. The cars can park themselves outside the city center where parking is plentiful/cheap/free, and we can triple the capacity of our existing streets.
--
make install -not war
What I'm concerned about is what if you accidentally hit the assist switch while driving on the freeway, or if the auto-pilot device could be over-ridden, or hi-jacked, and perhaps you can lose control of your car, from some mischievous kid tampering with your on-board computer system.
Sigs are overrated.
If someone so un-coordinated as me can do it, anyone can do it. So in the end after a week of practice and 5 years later I ended up with $200/quarter*3 quarters/year*5 years=$3000 profit.
Grandparent poster allow me to introduce you to the parent poster.
He's the idiot that thinks you should undertake him because 56 is a plenty fine cruising speed for the passing lane.
Please bitch slap him for all of us.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
This is all fine and dandy untill it hits a kid. Then who is to blame for it? The driver, the company who make the car or none of the above (which I bet the company will try to claim)?
I like muppets.
note: "rode in / drove" ... are you even old enough to remember those muscle cars? ;)
Most of the people with those 'fart machines' just put a toner on their exhaust, not really accomplishing much of all. Don't judge japanese sports cars based on how most of them look (fools with body kits, NOS stickers, and wing-size spoilers).
Though, some japanese sports cars ARE a bit better than american sports cars: Lighter bodies, higher revving engines, and better handling. Try comparing the handling and acceleration of, say, a '93 civic hatchback with an integra GSR engine swap (and all that entails) to a corvette, and you'll understand.
Compare:
61 Stingray to a 2002 subaru impreza wrx, and you see a 0-60 in 6.2 seconds compared to 5.5 seconds. Also note that the wrx has all wheel drive, including steering: when you turn the wheel a little bit, it turns all four wheels in the same direction to ease lane changes. Turn it more, and the rear wheels begin to turn in the opposite direction, allowing you to take corners much tighter. Yeah, your muscle car can get there in a straight line maybe a little faster than the WRX, but can it take a turn at 60 miles an hour without sliding?
Compare the same stingray to a mitsubishi lancer evolution VIII, and you see 6.2 seconds compared to 3.5 seconds.
In a true race, and not a flat-out drag race, I'd take a Japanese or European sports car over an American hog any day.
Not to mention, they're more reliable... 60's and 70's muscle cars sound awesome, and pack a lot of punch, but they don't hold up to the sheer technical superiority of modern Japanese cars. Don't believe for one second that the morons with ricer kits on their cars represent Japanese sports cars one bit.
Amazingly public transport companies park their vehicles outside the city as well. Not many bus depots in the city centers.
Oh and taxi's also serve a similar function. I believe they paint them yellow over there instead of the normal black that civilized people use.
While your idea sounds nice it has just one small drawback. If you equip every car with it you have just doubled the traffic in and out of the city center. Your car driving you to your work and then driving itself out to a parking lot. The last thing busy cities need is more traffic.
Oh and an other version of truly "self parking" cars? Getting a ride with a co-worker. Drops me off in front of the office. All it costs is to make two cups of coffee.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Sure you can. But is the owner of the car ahead of you (or behind you) just as skilled as you are?
Myself, I don't remember when I used parallel parking last time. Must be sometime around 1998, most likely. There isn't much need for this skill here.
$700 for a system to self park a car they size of a postage stamp.....bah....if you can't parallel park a prius you shouldn't be allowed to drive.
actually I am happy to see you, however that is in fact a banana in my pocket.
Driving while not holding the steering wheel? Not even with one hand? You get to contribute to the police department budget.
Tight spot or not, Shaolin training is the answer to your problems: just watch the last 10 seconds of the trailer here and learn! ;-)
My other Beowulf cluster is... er...
http://www.iltalehti.fi/osastot/autot/200603234276 611_au.shtml
http://media.almamedia.fi/id/75630.wmv
http://media.almamedia.fi/id/75631.wmv
Well, check this out, then.
Excellent. Another 'convenience' feature which helps out people who are clearly far too STUPID to use a car.
I remeber reading an article recently that put people with high end, well kitted out cars in cars with NO driver aids and subjected them to a few tests such as skid pans and high speed maneuvres(sp?!) - the results were fairly predictable. Most were so used to the features that automatically kicked in when they did something stupid that when faced with a car that didn't have them, they had NO idea what was going on and lost control in all circumstances.
I personally feel that there needs to be more driver education and less dependence on these driver aids! I appreciate they might be important in an accident of course but not all circumstances where driver aids may be used could be classed as accidents!
"Hey! Unless this is a nude love-in, get the hell off my property!!"
The thing is: the driver is still responsible for what his car does. He should look if there are obstacles. He's still in charge: as soon as he hit the brakes the system stops. It's like cruise control... Nobody is going to argue that a driver putting his cruise control at 150mph isn't an idiot. Same thing here....
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
I don't believe you. Unless you're on a motorbike, or have the ability to move your card sideways. Or have a car under 1m wide.
Why? Simple mathematics. As soon as your car is more than 1 metre wide it's length across the diagonal is at least 10cm longer than its long front to back. So it physically wont fit in the gap to get out.
You're right - the computer wont be able to achieve that. Computers are constrained to the possible.
Self-parking cars, robots that fetch your beer. This is it folks - we finally made it to the FUTURE! :D
Welcome.
I wonder if having this feature will drop insurance rates?
I think you are thinking of Buckminster Fuller's Dymaxion Car. There are some videos of it here at the American Master's site, but not of it parking. Though there is one of it pulling a tight U-turn around a police officer. I do think this is the same car I saw a video of where the car came in at an angle and then turned it's rear wheel and eased it's back in to parallel park. There is a bit more info on wikipedia too. (also here and here)
Parallel parking isn't too difficult - I did it in my car all the time (I've moved to a location where I no longer need the car, public transport suits me fine and I like not having to pay all the taxes)... tight spots aren't a problem.
But along comes some asshole who turns that tight spot into an impossible spot by parking in front of / behind you without leaving enough room for you to get out comfortably. More often than not, you're not going to find the person to ask them to please move their car - or perhaps they can't anymore either. Rather than zig-zagging numerous times to edge my way out, I'd gently push the other car out of the way first - and if gently didn't work, firmly would; alarms be damned.
A system that can get you out of those -those- situations would be much more appreciated - like another commenter mentioned, those videos of cars with all four wheels turning a full 90 degrees, that's what we'd need.
The original directions forgot to include the counter-steer after you get close to the curve while continuing to back up so you're right. Merely to "slowly bring the wheel back to rest state" would leave you at 60 degrees to the curb if you followed those directions to the letter.
t unring-the wheel-a-lot-to-wiggle-closer-to-the-curb method which is a real pain.
Not only that, but if you live in Chicago (or anywhere with tight parking), you'll find that you don't have room to do it all in the one-pass method and you have to do that drive-forwards-and-backwards-several-times-while-