PRE2019 4 Group8

PRE2019 4 Group8

Group Members

Name	Student ID
Sietse Backx	1255924	s.backx@student.tue.nl
Rien Boonstoppel	0946480	d.j.boonstoppel@student.tue.nl
Luc Geurts	1237117	l.p.a.geurts@student.tue.nl
Mandy Grooters	1236053	m.grooters1@student.tue.nl
Tar van Kieken	1244433	t.m.k.v.krieken@student.tue.nl

Introduction

Visiting a theme park or a festival can be a great stress relief. However, what is worse than to start a relaxing event with trying to park your car in what seems to be a never-ending, saturated parking lot. Event parking is a key issue in society nowadays. With occasional large social gatherings, parking demand often does not meet supply. In combination with a shortage in parking staff, congestion results leaving drivers with frustration.

When organizing a large scale event, there are several key aspects to take into account with regard to transportation and vehicle placement or traffic management in general. The first key bottleneck to consider is the road capacity . Accessibility to event sites is often limited due to the fact that the location was not designed for large events. Next to that, cost is an important factor when planning an event. In most cases, it would not be sensible to construct a parking lot for a single event. Finally, the time scale of an event is important. Can visitors arrive over the course of several days or mere hours? In order to create an effective event transportation plan, the traffic bottlenecks need to be dealt with. The first measure to optimize the transportation, is to create travel capacity. This can either be done by reducing transport system demand or by increasing capacity. For instance, if the event is planned during a holiday, more transportation facilities such as buses are available to be used for the special event. A second approach is to inform visitors that transportation and parking will take considerable time. Essentially, by conveying a warning, visitors might decide to arrive earlier which spreads demand peaks. Another improvement is to take traffic efficiency measures. For example, by using traffic signals to favor the event traffic flow, delays can be reduced. Additionally, travel bans can be implemented to open capacity for event traffic. Finally, the emphasis should be on public transportation to prevent parking issues in the first place . If all these measures still lead to congestion, a new solution must be found.

Analogously with large events, in large cities, parking is also a considerable problem. Nearly 30% of traffic congestion in cities is caused by drivers looking for a parking spot . Designing a parking system such that drivers can find a parking faster is therefore essential. Common solutions involve a LED system to indicate free and occupied parking spaces, however, these solutions do not control traffic flow. Another option which does take into account traffic flow is automatic parking spot assignment. Automatic parking assignment can compute optimal routes taking into account lot occupancy, travel distance, conflict avoidance and walking distance . Nonetheless, this solution is limited to mobile phone use.

Subject

A robotic parking assistant which helps drivers to find a parking spot and simultaneously optimizes traffic flow for faster parking.

Problem Statement

In summary, the key issues to resolve are the enormous rise in demand of parking spaces with special events and the inadequate parking management. These issues result in congestion and frustration of drivers due to the delay suffered from finding a parking space.

Objectives

The purpose of this project is to design a robot which interacts with drivers so to optimize car park traffic flow and car positioning.

User, Society and Enterprise

The primary users of the parking robot are companies that are dealing with large parking lots. Such as theme parks and festival organizations. These companies want to improve the experience of their visitors by avoiding parking problems. The parking robot will significantly decrease the waiting times for a parking spot and thus increase the overall experience of the visitors.

The secondary users are the visitors of theme parks and festivals that are directly interacting with the parking robot to find a parking spot. The parking robot can quickly guide them to a parking spot. Without the parking robot, visitors would have to wait longer which adds stress and frustration to their day which will decrease their experience . These secondary users can be divided into different categories which are again assigned to their designated parking areas. The primary users can assign these specific areas to their preferences and it depends on their targeted audience. As an example, one can have a different parking area for disabled people, an area for the elderly and an area for large families. These groups all have different preferences with respect to where they want to park. To elaborate on this, the elderly for example, they want to have parking spaces closer to their destination which will provide them with a shorter walking distance. Disabled people will also want their designated parking spots close to their final destination and extra room for parking as they sometimes are dependent on wheelchairs or other devices. They may also need quick access to wheelchair ramps, restrooms and special ticketing services. As for the family category, they don’t need any special preferences as they can just be used to fill up the remaining parking spots when all the others have been assigned.

For society, the parking robot can have great improvement opportunities. The parking robot will be more efficient than the current traffic controllers, which will improve the traffic flow around the parking lots. Consequently, the traffic flow on high- and motorways around the parking spot will improve. Therefore, people that do not visit the theme park or event will not experience any delay in their travel due to this effect. Furthermore, congestion increases fuel consumption, environmental pollution and traffic accidents. So the parking robot will have a decreasing effect on these matters too.

From an enterprise perspective, multiple groups can take advantage of the parking robot. First, the organization of events and theme parks. They don’t have to deploy traffic controllers anymore. Which eventually could decrease their overall costs. Secondly, the research that will be done is interesting for the development of other robots. The navigation and communication technique used in the parking robot could be applied in other areas as well. When the parking robot will be developed on a larger scale, robot companies have to produce more robots than they do now, which will eventually decrease the cost per robot. The profit companies make, because of the enhanced traffic flow caused by the parking robot, could be used to do more research on parking robots or robots who use this navigation and communication technology in general. Such can lead to the continuous improvement of the used techniques.

Requirements

In order to investigate possible solutions, requirements, preferences and constraints have to be established.

Requirements

• The system should handle up to 5 cars simultaneously for every system.
• The system should be able to localize itself and the cars within 10 cm.
• The system should autonomously recharge batteries after a shift.
• The system should be able to operate without the guidance of the staff.
• The system should regulate traffic flow for both entrance and exit of the parking lot.
• The system should be able to handle payments at the exit.
• The system should display clearly how a car will reach its designated parking spot.
• The system should be able to navigate the car autonomously to the next free parking space.
• The system should detect if cars are misplaced.
• The system should be able to operate on rough terrain, where cars are still able to ride. For example temporary grass parking spaces.
• The system should not endanger any user.
• The system should be able to differentiate between different types of users. For example handicapped people should be prioritised.
• The system should ensure that the capacity of the parking lot is not exceeded.
• The system should be able to communicate with the users in a clear way (97% of the people understand the communication)
• The system should have a help option.
• The system should have an emergency option.
• The system should be cheaper than current valet-parking options over a span of 10 years.
• The system should handle cars up to 4.8 meter in length and up to 1.9 meter in width.
• The system should be low maintenance. The robots should be able to operate for a year without breaking down.

Preferences

• The system should be able to read the licence plate of the cars.
• The system should be able to guide the user to its car when they forgot their parking space, based on the license plate.
• The system should guide cars to parking spaces in the shortest root possible.
• The system should be able to investigate the parking layout by itself.
• The system should give users the opportunity to state their parking preferences and handle those accordingly.
• The system should have a feedback option.
• The system should be able to instruct the driver to park their vehicle properly if it is misplaced.
• The system should be able to fill a parking lot with cars in a shorter time than current valet-parking options.
• The system should be able to work on 90% of the parking lots.
• The system should be able to measure the length, width and height of the incoming car, in order to know whether it fits in certain parking spaces.

Constraints

• The system should be ground-based.
• The parking lot has clear entrance(s) and exit(s) which can be regulated and entrance
• A parking space has the following dimensions in the Netherlands
  • 5 meter length by 2.4 meter width, when perpendicular parking
  • 6 meter length by 2.5 meter width, when parallel parking
  • 6 meter length by 3.5 meter width for the disabled parking space when parallel parking
  • 5 meter length by 3.5 meter width for the disabled parking space when perpendicular parking

State-of-the-art

Our robot project can be split into two parts:

• The tracking of the availability of the parking spaces
• The guiding of the user vehicles to the parking spaces

For the state of the art can we look at the current state of technologies for these two parts of the problem.

Tracking of parking spaces

A lot of technologies are produced for the tracking of the availability of parking spaces. The simplest and first technology for tracking the availability, is the tracking of the total capacity of the parking lot and the amount of cars which enter and leave the space. This is already used in a lot parking spaces of malls, theme parks or other parking lots with a clear enter and leave point.

The second method is to check if there is a vehicle on a parking spot with a detection unit on every parking unit itself. This detection unit can for example be an induction coil, ultrasonic sensor, infrared sensor, pressure sensor or a microwave sensor. The information of all detection devices is then gathered in one management system, to check the overall availability of the parking lot. The individual spots can be characterized by giving a value of 1 or 0 in the system or by setting them as “AVAILABLE” or “OCCUPIED” on the place where it is shown to the user.

Another method for the tracking of free parking spaces, is to use a given three-dimensional model of the parking lot. A capture device can then be used to represent an image of the parking lot, which can be compared with the three-dimensional model of an empty parking lot. From this comparison of the two three-dimensional models, the availability of parking spots can be determined and translated back to the user.

The parking lot can also be divided in different slots of a certain number of parking spaces. For example, ten parking spaces can be divided into two slots of five parking spaces. The GPS of cars can be used to track in which parking slot the car is located. From this information can be determined how many parking spaces are left in each parking slot and can the next car be directed to the parking slot with available parking spaces.

All the previous systems use some kind of tracking method to determine the availability of the parking spaces. Another method is predicting the availability of parking spaces by looking at patterns in old data. With this method is giving a precise number of available parking spaces not possible, due to the accuracy of long term predictions, the other parking lots in the area and the user behavior. However, if the accuracy of this method is high enough, can it still result in good approximations of the vacant places on parking lots.

Guiding of the user

If the information of the available parking places is measured, it is important that the system can choose the best possible parking spot for the vehicle. There are different performance measures for the best parking spot, but the most used ones are a combination of that the time riding to the parking spot and the time walking from the parking spot to the destination are minimal.

When the optimal parking spot is chosen, can this be passed to the user in different ways. The first one is to show the route to the parking spot on the dashboard of the vehicle. A lot of cars nowadays have GPS on the dashboard and this can be used to show the information of the parking spots. This results in that there needs to be a continuous information flow between the vehicle and the availability of the parking space.

This can however also be done with predicted information of the availability of the parking spaces. This information can be given to the GPS of the vehicle, such that the route to the predicted available spot is displayed on the dashboard.

A lot of the times, employers are deployed to guide the vehicles to the empty parking spots. This can be seen on parking lots for places like festival, amusement parks and museums. This can be replaced by robotic solutions. Signs can be set on the ground with information on where the vehicle needs to go for the empty parking spot. For example a sign with an arrow or an cross can be used to show in a simple way for the user, which way he needs to follow.

The employers can also be replaced by robotic vehicles that lead the vehicle to the best parking spot. These robots can fully ride the way of the beginning of the parking lot to the parking spot, or can be used as robotic employers, by going to the crossings and then showing the right way to the user in the vehicle.

Concepts

Partial solutions

The requirements, preferences and constraints can be subdivided in partial problems, namely: obstacle avoidance and checking if parking spots are available, vehicle motion, driver communication and user interaction. In this section, solutions for each problem are proposed.

Obstacle avoidance and parking availability

In order for the system to avoid parked cars and guide drivers safely to their designated parking spot, the system should be able to observe its environment and determine its position. To be able to this, two types of sensors can be used, namely: dead reckoning sensors and environmental sensors. Dead reckoning sensor operate by integrating sensor data over time to determine the vehicles position. Environmental sensors are used to gather information about the vehicles surroundings.

The first sensor option is to use cameras which can observe in 360° short or long range. These cameras can be placed either on top of the vehicle, on the sides of the vehicles or externally placed (see figure below). The key application for this cameras is to recognize objects. Some tasks such as traffic light identification is only possible with the use of cameras. However, because of the great amount of pixels, camera data processing can be intensive. On top of that, camera quality is susceptible to environmental conditions such as rain, fog or snow.

Radar can also be used either at short or long range. Different objects reflect the radio waves differently. The advantage of using radar is that positional and velocity data can be acquired simultaneously. On top of that, radars are impervious to weather conditions. Despite, radar acquired data yields low resolution and a 2D image.

Lidar uses light to receive information about distances between objects. Lidar is used for short range applications. It is used to obtain position and geometry of an object. If multiple Emitter and receiver sets are placed on the vehicle, Lidar can be used to create a 3D image of the environment. Next to that, because dark and light objects reflect light at a different intensity, Lidar can be used to detect road markings. A disadvantage is that Lidar data can be affected by the weather.

Ultrasonic sensors are short range and unaffected by weather conditions. Currently, ultrasonic sensors are used for parking assist.

GPS can be used to determine the vehicle position globally. GPS, however, is not enough to determine the position with great accuracy, as GPS can only obtain an objects position with 1-2 m accuracy.

In general, all of the sensors considered above have pros and cons. Hence, these sensors are often used in combination in self-driving vehicles.

The partial solutions to obstacle avoidance and parking availability.

Vehicle motion

Another crucial aspect of the parking assistant robot is motion. The robot should both be able to operate on asphalt and rough terrain. Therefore, a solution must be found to allow smooth operation in both environments.

The first option is to use large wheels with a thick profile. If the wheels are independently propelled and sprung, the vehicle will even be able to have grip in a muddy and bumpy environment. Another option is to use tracks. Tracks are used in the most inaccessible terrains. However, tracks are not as suitable for use on asphalt. Another option is to use legs. The advantage of legs as that they can move the vehicle in nearly all environments. Nonetheless, legs often require complex mechanical actuating systems (see figure below).

Additionally, steering must be considered. This can either be done by rotating left and right wheels or tracks at different speeds or by turning the front or back wheels.

The partial solutions to vehicle motion.

Communication

Concerning communication with car park users, the parking assistant robot should clearly indicate that the driver must follow. This can be done in several ways (see figure below). The first method is to use a screen on which instructions appear. The advantage of this is that the messages can be diverse. The second approach is to use indication lights. For instance, a blinking light appears when drivers should follow the robot. A possible disadvantage of this method might be that drivers do not understand what the lights represent. Another way is to use sound to attract the driver's attention. Although this might be the most clear approach to convey a method, the volume of the sound has to be loud in order to penetrate a car. Hence, this might not be a good solution in a parking garage. Finally, waving arms could be used to attract attention and indicate if a car should follow or turn.

The partial solutions to driver communication.

Interaction

Before a car leaves the car park, the customer should pay for parking. To do this, the customer must be able to interact with the robot. This might be possible with the use of a tablet.

Integrated solutions

Requirement: able to turn on its place Preference: as small footprint as possible

Solution 1

A two wheel based self-stabilizing robot – like a segway

• Display on eye level
• Sensors on top
• Weight distribution on top en bottom in order to maintain balance

Pros

• Small wheelbase, able to navigate to relative small places
• Agile
• Ability to keep itself upright after perturbation

Cons

• Possibly less stable
• Possibly dangerous movements when trying to keep itself upright

A two wheel based self-stabilizing robot.

Solution 2

A four wheel based robot – two powered wheels, two caster wheels

• Display on eye level
• Sensors on top
• Weight distribution on bottom in order to lower center of mass

Pros

• Stable from itself

Cons

• Less ability to react to perturbations to keep itself upright
• Because of the dimensions of the robot (way taller then wide) not that stable
• Bigger footprint then two wheel based

A four wheel based robot – two powered wheels, two caster wheels.

Solution 3

A two wheel based robot, with added extra control wheel. The arm of this of this extra control wheel is sprung and shock absorbing, the wheel can be a fixed one or a castor wheel and is in normal use not touching the ground.

Pros

• Same as solution 1

Cons

• More stable then solution 1
• Because of the added control wheel smaller correction suffice to keep upright, so it is less dangerous

A two wheel based robot, with added extra control wheel.

Planning

	Activities	Person(s)
Week 1	Introduction lecture Brainstorm on possible subjects Choosing subject Literature study	All All All All
Week 2	Tutor meeting 1 Problem definition State of the Art research User analysis Possible solutions Planning Updating wiki page	All Sietse Luc Mandy Tar Rien All
Week 3	Tutor meeting 2 Literature study User analysis, interviews Research on hardware solution Start on computer vision software Updating wiki page	All Name Name Name Name All
Week 4	Tutor meeting 3 Finishing user analysis Prototyping hardware solution Continuing on computer vision software Research on further neccesary software Updating wiki page	All Name Name Name Name All
Week 5	Tutor meeting 4 Prototyping hardware solution Continuing on software Updating wiki page	All Name Name All
Week 6	Tutor Meeting 5 Finishing hardware solution Implementing software User feedback Updating wiki page	All Name Name Name All
Week 7	Tutor meeting 6 User feedback Start on presentation Finishing wiki page	All Name Name Name
Week 8	Tutor meeting 7 Finishing presentation Final presentation Finalizing project	All Name Name Name

Final Deliverables

• Hardware prototype
• Software for recognizing parking spaces
• This wiki page
• Presentation video

Log

Week 1

Name	Hours	Summary
Luc	15	Introduction lecture, two meetings, brainstorm on possible subjects, literature study, written: State-of-art
Mandy	15	Introduction lecture, two meetings, brainstorm on possible subjects, literature study, written: User, Society, and Enterprise
Rien	15	Introduction lecture, two meetings, brainstorm on possible subjects, literature study
Sietse	17	Introduction lecture, two meetings, brainstorm on possible subjects, literature study, problem statement, RPCs
Tar	X	Summary

Week 2

Name	Hours	Summary
Luc	X	Summary
Mandy	X	Summary
Rien	X	Summary
Sietse	8	Concepting: researching and drawing partial solutions, and drawing entire solutions.
Tar	X	Summary

Week 3

Name	Hours	Summary
Luc	X	Summary
Mandy	X	Summary
Rien	X	Summary
Sietse	X	Summary
Tar	X	Summary

Week 4

Name	Hours	Summary
Luc	X	Summary
Mandy	X	Summary
Rien	X	Summary
Sietse	X	Summary
Tar	X	Summary

Week 5

Name	Hours	Summary
Luc	X	Summary
Mandy	X	Summary
Rien	X	Summary
Sietse	X	Summary
Tar	X	Summary

Week 6

Name	Hours	Summary
Luc	X	Summary
Mandy	X	Summary
Rien	X	Summary
Sietse	X	Summary
Tar	X	Summary

Week 7

Name	Hours	Summary
Luc	X	Summary
Mandy	X	Summary
Rien	X	Summary
Sietse	X	Summary
Tar	X	Summary

Week 8

Name	Hours	Summary
Luc	X	Summary
Mandy	X	Summary
Rien	X	Summary
Sietse	X	Summary
Tar	X	Summary

References