Finding a Parking Spot In Real Time with Ford
Only 12% percent of drivers are able to find parking spaces immediately. The other 88% percent have to hunt down a spot in the concert jungle that is New York city. But what if your car could tell you where there was an open parking spot in real time and help you book it? What if the technology to do this already existed?
Ford Motor Company and Georgia Tech have partnered on two new initiatives that use existing semi-autonomous technologies and sensors to help locate parking and reposition vehicles in increasingly crowded urban areas around the world.
Ford's Parking Spotter, Remote Repositioning and Painless Parking experiments can give city drivers real time data on where to park and options to book a parking space, as well as provide them with on-demand repositioning services wherever they go, especially if they arrive in cities in shared vehicles. With smarter parking, drivers can spend less time hunting for parking spots, use less energy, cut down on emissions and help fight congestion around the world.
Right now, drivers in large metropolitan communities spend up to 20 minutes searching for parking spaces every single day, which translates into nearly three and a half days every year. Imagine the time lost with family members or the reduced productivity at work that results from simply searching for an open spot. Moreover, the endless search for that elusive spot wastes fuel and increases emissions. In short, this is very much a quality of life issue for thousands of residents of the greater New York City area.Our city not only remains the most populous in the nation but also the one with the greatest urban growth, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
With Parking Spotter, drivers will be able to locate open spots in real time, reserve them and navigate to them more efficiently. The process works like this:
For shared vehicles or drivers who are new to the city, Ford's Remote Repositioning project will help reposition cars remotely, like returning shared vehicles to their original spots during off-peak hours. Remote Repositioning could help cut down on congestion and time required to return shared cars to their original parking spaces, often on the other side of a city.
Using existing technology and utilizing a cellular network Ford's remote positioning project is able to stream live video signals from the vehicle to a remote driver. The vehicle can be remotely driven without anyone needing to be physically in the vehicle. It's not completely autonomous driving as there is still a person driving the vehicle, just not in the car itself. This developing Ford technology and innovation is reimagining mobility solutions for today and the future; moving towards the goal of helping the disabled, elderly, or those who have lost mobility one day improve the quality of their lives.
