Many drivers have problems with parallel parking. Limited parking space in big cities forces us to maneuver our cars back and forth for hours. And even then we rarely park in the perfect space. Parallel parking also is the most frightening task on driving exams. It requires candidates to park their car in a space that is only four feet longer than the length of their car. Self-parking car concept solves most of these issues.
Developments that might help you a great deal with parallel parking are plentiful. They include new solutions for on-board computers, smart sensor arrays that encompass the entire vehicle, and even the innovations in tire technology. The idea that sparked the creation of this story was the growing popularity of the Canadian backyard inventor William Liddiard.
Lifehacking to the Max
There is something utterly fulfilling when it comes to hacking your way around everyday tasks. The agony of parallel parking seems to be one of those triggers that sparked a hail of inventions. Useful or not, they all served as the playground for both amateur and professional innovators. And this playground started surfacing some awesome results.
Driving a smaller car might seem like a nice way to tackle the parking obstacles. But what if we told you that there’s an emergence of super awesome self-parking innovations? This is, of course, not the freshest news. But we are very interested in seeing how these developments move into the wide-scale automotive industry.
Omnidirectional Wheel Design
What is the omnidirectional wheel exactly? Put simply, these are the wheels that have the autonomy to move and rotate full 360 degrees. Unlike the traditional wheel we’re all accustomed to, these are fitted with small discs around the circumference, which are perpendicular to the driving direction. More on this can be read in the Wikipedia article.
Latest Innovations
The latest one to come our way is courtesy of aforementioned Canadian inventor. What this design does makes it worthy of a second look. First of all, it does not come with some of the mechanical complexity associated with other omnidirectional wheel designs. Liddiard’s design uses a one-piece tire in the form of a flexible torus. In it, there’s a set of rollers which sits on a wheel fitted with a set of motorized rollers around its circumference. The entire tire can be rotated around its toroidal axis, resulting in a thread which can move sideways with respect to the wheel.
The entire process is demonstrated in a video. The small Toyota used as a demonstration vehicle can easily move sideways and spin. We would be wary of using these wheels on a road car until they can be demonstrated to match a traditional tire in terms of sideways stability. Especially when they are not in their omnidirectional mode. But we can instantly see that they would be a significant help to those infuriated by parallel parking. And not only to them. Imagine the fluidity with which the operators of industrial machines can operate their forklifts in confined spaces.
How Does the Self-Parking Work?
Most of the today’s self-parking systems are not fully autonomous. The onboard computer takes over the wheel, while the driver is still in control of brake and gas pedals. While moving into the parking space, computer signals the driver to stop and shift the car into reverse or drive when needed. The computer also notifies the driver when the self-parking process is finished.
Car computers use sensors, cameras, and radars in order to locate objects around them. Models that use sensors, have them placed on car’s side and front and rear bumpers. They transmit and receive, and use their return time to calculate distances between objects.
History of Self-Parking Concept
VW was the first company that integrated self-parking technology in one of its concept models. In 1992 IRW Futura came with a computer that was able to autonomously conduct parallel self-parking tasks. This feature added up $3,000 to Futura’s price but was never incorporated into VW’s production models.
Toyota Prius is one of the first and the most popular hybrid cars. Its second generation vehicle is the first production model with the self-parking feature. Interestingly enough, until 2012, Toyota was the only manufacturer that introduced self-parking as a standard feature in one of its trims. Its Intelligent Parking Assist System was later introduced in several Lexus models, including Lexus LS.
Other manufacturers also developed their own self-parking systems. Ford introduced Active Park Assist in Fusion, Escape, Explorer, Flex and Lincoln MKS models, while BMW introduced a system called Parking Assistant in their sixth-generation 3 Series. BMW’s Parking Assistant evolved to the point where it can be activated from a smart phone or a smart watch.
One of the most groundbreaking self-parking systems was Bosch’s fully automated Automatic Park Assist. This system allows the driver to control the car’s self-parking process from the curbside. Automatic Park Assist is able to compute steering maneuvers with the use of ultrasound sensors integrated on vehicle’s bumpers and drive the car into the right spot, without any help from the driver.
What the Future Holds?
The self-parking feature is just a piece of the puzzle. As well as adaptive cruise control and many other autonomous features that are currently forming the base for creating the first fully autonomous car.
National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) defined 5 levels of autonomous driving. Level 0 stands for cars that are fully controlled by the driver and Level 4 for fully autonomous cars. Fully autonomous means that it can perform all critical driving and safety functions as well as monitor roadways conditions.
How Can We Safely Reach Full Car Autonomy?
Conventional car manufacturers usually advocate the step-by-step approach. It increases car autonomy by gradually adding autonomous features, self-parking being one of them. Simultaneously, tech giants like Google are working their pants off to create a fully autonomous vehicle. That’s why Google X’s Self-Driving Car project instantly reached Level 4, while conventional car manufacturers like Volvo are still at Level 3. We are yet to see the full potential of Volvo S60 Drive Me concept.
Although it’s hard to say which one of these two approaches is the right one, I would side with car manufacturers on this question. Car autonomy is a huge deal, and it can’t be introduced overnight. The proof of this is the latest crash caused by miscalculation of Tesla’s Autopilot. The driver didn’t survive a horrible crash when his Tesla S collided with an 18-wheel tractor-trailer. Google’s self-driving car also struck a bus in February this year, while trying to avoid sandbags that were blocking the road.
Car autonomy requires all car parts to be as advanced as its software. Let me put it this way, we all agree that today’s cars have outstanding tire solutions, and here you can check some of the examples. When all other vehicle parts are as advanced and safe as today’s tires, we can start counting the days until production models include the self-driving feature as part of their package.
Until then, we’ll need to be satisfied with advanced cruise control and independent self-parking features. Also, Tesla’s Autopilot popularity is still on the rise, despite the recent crash. If that doesn’t sound great to you, think what would you say to a driving instructor who would offer you to pass parallel parking part of a driving exam by using the self-parking system? I would definitely buy them a dinner!
