This paper shows the potential of using in-vehicle sensors to determine free parking places in cities. It will also be shown how the crowdsourcing of this data can be used to enrich the existing information about available parking places. Furthermore this concept is compared to the state of the art and its future potential is analysed. Additionally the results of a user survey are discussed, which forms the basis for the characteristics of the presented crowdsourcing concept. The urban mobility based on private transport more and more faces the problem of limited space for public parking places especially in dense cities all over the world. In the individual perspective, this leads to frustration of the drivers due to time-consuming search for a parking place. On the other hand this also affects the overall traffic within urban areas and studies show that between 20 and 40 percent of the overall traffic in cities is generated by searching for parking places [2,3,5,8,10]. Nevertheless, except for private or public owned parking garages, the information on available parking places in most cities is still quite poor. A solution might be the installation of stationary sensors in the on-street parking infrastructure to determine real-time occupancies. Preliminary steps towards such a solution are already taken in San Francisco [12] since 2010. But due to the high costs for installing and maintaining around 12,000 of these on-street sensors this solution might not be feasible for the majority of cities worldwide. Therefore this paper investigates the possibility to use already available in-vehicle sensors to detect free on-street parking places when passing by. To achieve a solution which also focuses on the user’s constraints while searching for a parking place, a survey was conducted to get more detailed information about the drivers’ typical behaviour and needs. The results show that most drivers are not willing to invest more than five minutes in searching for a parking place and this is the reason that quite often they prefer to drive on a detour where the probability could be significantly higher. It is of vital importance for them that the proposed method will not only contribute in saving time but also in detecting and suggesting parking places near enough to their destination. The survey revealed that the potential users request a really reliable application that will ensure the validity of the detected parking place. This means that they need to be aware of the length of the space (and thus if their car fits in it) as well as its exact location and type (short/long term, parking place for residents/disabled people). In conclusion through the conducted survey the participants gave their preference in terms of the kind of information they want to receive: the depiction of the availability of free parking spaces for all the blocks around their destination is what the majority of the drivers expect from such an advanced application. The conceptual framework of this application will build on community based crowdsourcing. With on-vehicle sensors such as cameras, ultrasonic sensors and in future radar sensors it is possible to detect free parking places accurately. This enables detecting multiple parking places with a single vehicle. With a community based approach it is possible to receive and consolidate parking space information from a large fleet of vehicles. In addition it is possible to use a smartphone camera attached within the vehicle for sensing. Today many vehicles are already equipped with such cameras, ultrasonic sensors and radar sensors allowing the use of community based approaches without the need of new developments. Market forecasts predict that the market for driver assistance systems is growing vastly thus having a large potential for our concept in the future. There are different possibilities to communicate the parking space information available on the vehicle CAN network to a backend server. One possible approach is installing an additional communication control unit on the vehicle with an interface to the CAN and an UMTS/3G/LTE interface. Another approach is to use available communication interfaces on the vehicle such as the vehicle infotainment system, head up display etc. This approach allows – in comparison to already existing solutions in the market – to communicate more detailed and precise information about free and valid parking places, including additional details like the exact length, width etc. to the driver.     «

This paper shows the potential of using in-vehicle sensors to determine free parking places in cities. It will also be shown how the crowdsourcing of this data can be used to enrich the existing information about available parking places. Furthermore this concept is compared to the state of the art and its future potential is analysed. Additionally the results of a user survey are discussed, which forms the basis for the characteristics of the presented crowdsourcing concept. The urban mobility...     »