In the US some cities have started questioning the current city architectures regarding the parking of cars and trucks. In a nutshell, a lot of valuable land space is reserved for vehicle parking by city ordinances. However, the latest thinking is to leave such a decision to local residents and business.
The city layout design philosophy can trace its roots back to the end of the second world war when it brought an explosion in car ownership, and cities across the US introduced minimum parking requirements during the 1950s. These zoning requirements meant a certain number of parking spaces for apartments and businesses, off-street, which led to spreading out of retail shops, offices and the like. This in turn made navigating through such an area difficult without cars.
Instead, now the city planners would like more dense zones where people could just walk or take around without having drive a car. This new trend means that there would be a great demand for AVP (Auto Valet Parking) where the driver can just stop infront of a store, gets out, and instructs the car to go find parking. Then, the AVP-enabled car would drive a few miles by itself to a dedicated parking garage, perhaps a few blocks away.
Check out the following news articles. While the statistics of “eight parking spaces for every car” is rather misleading, the advantages and benefits of some kind of optimization of the land allocation are not far fetched.
America has eight parking spaces for every car. Here’s how cities are rethinking that land. From Austin to Anchorage, U.S. cities opt to ditch their off-street parking minimums
In the US some cities have started questioning the current city architectures regarding the parking of cars and trucks. In a nutshell, a lot of valuable land space is reserved for vehicle parking by city ordinances. However, the latest thinking is to leave such a decision to local residents and business.
The city layout design philosophy can trace its roots back to the end of the second world war when it brought an explosion in car ownership, and cities across the US introduced minimum parking requirements during the 1950s. These zoning requirements meant a certain number of parking spaces for apartments and businesses, off-street, which led to spreading out of retail shops, offices and the like. This in turn made navigating through such an area difficult without cars.
Instead, now the city planners would like more dense zones where people could just walk or take around without having drive a car. This new trend means that there would be a great demand for AVP (Auto Valet Parking) where the driver can just stop infront of a store, gets out, and instructs the car to go find parking. Then, the AVP-enabled car would drive a few miles by itself to a dedicated parking garage, perhaps a few blocks away.
Check out the following news articles. While the statistics of “eight parking spaces for every car” is rather misleading, the advantages and benefits of some kind of optimization of the land allocation are not far fetched.
America has eight parking spaces for every car. Here’s how cities are rethinking that land. From Austin to Anchorage, U.S. cities opt to ditch their off-street parking minimums
There are mainly two approaches in AVP, or Auto Valet Parking technology: Type 1 and Type2. In a Type 1 systems, everything is contained within the car itself: sensors (cameras, radars and / or lidars), computing platform and the actual intelligence in the form of algorithms and software. In a sense, a Type 1 AVP is a stand-alone system.
On the other hand, in a Type 2 AVP system, sensors, computing platform and the intelligence are embedded in the parking garage buildings, or the “infrastructure.” For example, infrared sensors installed on the ceiling of the parking garage building detects moving cars, the server computer located somewhere else collects the data from these sensors and figures out where the car should go. Then, the car just follows the commands from the infrastructure. The car’s main function is then mostly restricted to DbW (Drive-by-Wire) operations such as steer-by-wire and throttle-by-wire.
As you can guess, Type 1 AVPs are cost effective and scalable because individual cars can implement AVP function within themselves. However, such a stand-alone AVP is more difficult and complex to develop. On the other hand, Type 2 AVPs need heavy investment in infrastructure for all the sensors and computing platform as well as error-free communication systems. Therefore, Type 2 AVPs are not scalable to many parking garages. But, since the “infrastructure” can see everything, it is much less complex to develop a Type 2 AVP system. In any case, both types of AVP systems are categorized as Level 4 Automated Driving.
There have been many expressions describing the technology where human supervision is not necessary for driving. While many terms such as autonomous driving, self-driving, and driverless cars have been used (even by some industry experts), the correct term is “automated driving” as defined by SAE (Society of Automotive Engineers). One philosophical difference between “autonomous” and “automated” driving is actually simple: if the system (or the car) itself makes the decision to drive itself, it is “autonomous” since the system acted as if it had its own consciousness.
For example, let’s suppose that the owner of the car got into the car, but fell asleep right away for whatever the reason is. If the car then analyzed the situation (the owner was in the car, but away from home, and it was late at night) and decided to “take the owner home,” then it was an “autonomous” decision.
In contrast, in an automated driving system, the system has to be instructed explicitly, say, “Car, let’s go home.” Then, the car starts driving, taking over “the driving tasks” and it is an automated driving system.
Regardless of the exact terminology, this example describes an SAE Level 4 Automated Driving system. The vast majority of the current production cars that we can buy today have SAE Level 2 ADAS (Advanced Driver Assistance System) where the cars can follow the car in front while staying within the lane marking. At the moment, only two cars, Mercedes-Benz S-Class and BMW 7 series are offered with Level 3 automated highway driving systems as an option.
