Parking problems have existed since the invention of the automobile. However, as rapid urbanization accelerated, it deteriorated even further. The world's industrialization, population growth, slow city development, and mismanagement of available parking space have all contributed to parking issues. According to studies, drivers in many places spend more than 15 minutes looking for parking. This forces drivers to park haphazardly, increasing parking demand and congestion on nearby roads.
To address these issues, an intelligent car parking system was developed, which reduces the driver's effort and time spent searching for parking spaces while also providing effective security for car safety. We can say that the effective implementation of our concept can result in a significant reduction in traffic congestion and save time in locating available parking vacancies. This system also eliminates air pollution caused by car exhaust and queues entering the parking area.
Project Objective’s:
The main objectives of our project are as follows:
- To reduce the driver’s effort and time in search of vacant parking space
- To guide drivers in occupying the nearest available parking slot
- To decrease fuel burning and emission of Co2 in searching the vacant slot
- To ensure vehicle safety
- To maintain a record of daily vehicles (Entering/ leaving) - will be used for future reference
Socio-Economic Benefits:
The economic benefits of Intelligent Car Parking Systems represent a significant opportunity for every municipality: with increased revenues, it is possible to develop new services for citizens, improve mobility, road infrastructure, and the urban fabric, while establishing a virtuous circle that can represent the true key to transforming a city into a smart city.
The major benefits our project is providing includes:
- Saves time and energy
- Reduces the force work
- Easy to implement
- Less chances of accident
- It’s a superior technology
- It also helps us to maintain a record of daily vehicles that will be used as a future reference
- Its versatile
- Reduces noise impact and pollution, acoustic and vibrational impacts
- Cost effective
- It provides a stress-free parking experience to the drivers and enables them to find vacant parking spaces immediately around their destination
- Provides convenience through intelligent software that allows for scheduled vehicle retrieval and optimized waiting times
Project Methodology:
The project is composed of both software and hardware components. It is a smart framework that is capable of identifying empty parking spaces as well as counting the vehicles moving in and out of the parking lot. Further, as an advanced feature, it will read the license plate of the vehicle using the computer vision technique. The detection process utilizes the IR sensors to identify the parking area occupied by the vehicle, and a camera module at the entrance keeps track of vehicle type. The automated system navigates the driver to the exact empty slot by displaying the information on the digital boards. In the future, a facial recognition system will be installed at the entrance that will identify regular customers and releases the token automatically.
Our project includes Arduino UNO that controls different sensors deployed in the system. To detect the existence of cars in parking slots, we use Infrared sensors. LCD module plays a role to display the status of parking lot where the drivers can view the status before entering the parking lot, when the car moves from the parking slot to exit, LCD updates its status by showing that slot as a free space and then the car moves towards the exit gate and by sensing the position of car through IR sensor the barrier opens with the help of servo motor and then the car leaves from the parking lot. IR sensors and servo motor are used at the entrance and exit gate of parking lot for opening and closing of the barrier.
For license Plate Recognition we use three steps:
- Read image into python using OpenCV
- Apply filtering edge detection using contour search to find numbers
- Extract text using Easyocr
Project Outcome:
The data (pictures, video) from the camera is then saved to the SD card for future use. Furthermore, we are counting the vehicles entering and exiting, which is saved for future reference.
