Personal Mobility

Reverse parking requires the driver to perform complicated steering operations while verifying
the safety of the maneuver all around the vehicle. Many drivers are not skilled at reverse
parking and there is a need for assist systems. To accommodate this need, an efficient
high-performance reverse parking assist with automatic steering was developed and
commercialized in 2003 (1). Subsequently, further development was performed to improve user
operability and convenience, such as the length of time required for setting the target position,
improving the understanding of the starting position, and parking on uneven or sloping ground.
This was followed in 2006 by the development of a function to determine the target parking
position by parking space recognition using ultrasonic sensors, and  parking space line
recognition using image processing, to reduce the time required to set the target position (2)(3).
As a result, the satisfaction level and use frequency by users has dramatically improved.
Furthermore, based on the results of parking space recognition  using an ultrasonic sensor, an
audio assistance function that informs the driver of the reverse parking starting position to make
it easier to know the starting position, and a function to improve parking accuracy by capturing
and tracking the parking space lines were developed.

Toyota Motor Corporation

Aisin Seiki Co., Ltd.

Presented at the 15th World Congress on Intelligent Transport Systems, November 16-20, 2008, New York, New York

Most parking assistance systems are on-board systems. One of the drawbacks of these
systems is the cost, which means that drivers  who really need assistance, like the elderly
drivers, cannot afford them, and the elderly driver has many characteristics. The objective of
this study is to construct the  external parking assistance system which makes it easy for the
elderly driver to drive a vehicle to the parking space by considering the characteristics of the
elderly driver. This study proposes an external parking assistance system for elderly driver
and reports the concept, experiments. We did several experiments by some elderly drivers and
evaluated the system by the experimental data and questionnaire. As the result of some
experiments with elderly driver, it became clear that elderly drivers need a system with little
delay, simple instruction and  objective evaluation. The result also showed that the elderly
driver could drive a vehicle to the target parking space with high precision and efficiency by
the proposed parking assistance system.

National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), Japan

Meijo University

Presented at the 15th World Congress on Intelligent Transport Systems, November 16-20, 2008, New York, New York

This paper describes an investigation on driver’s mental workload while parking. We focused
on three parking tasks of backward parking, forward parking, and backward starting, which
all drivers usually perform when parking their vehicle in their daily lives. We divided each
task into the following four phases in order to analysis the time-series variations of the
driver’s mental workload toward a specific point around the driver’s vehicle: approach to start
location, approach to parking space, re-approach for adjustment, adjustment in parking space.
Subjective assessment was conducted just after a finish of one parking task in terms of sense
of approach, anxiety of contact, and distribution of attention.  The experimental results by 21
participants suggest that the points with high mental workload are changed according to the
phase of the parking tasks and the three factors of the mental workload have high correlations
at each phase. Finally,  the influence of the difference of vehicle size on the variation of the
driver’s mental workload is discussed.

National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST)

Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd.

We developed the parking space detection using side-view camera image. This algorithm is
very simple and the influence of the noise is excluded as much as possible. It is difficult to
detect the parking space line using the through image of side-view camera, because this image
contains distortion of camera lens. However, we processed from this distorted image to
undistorted image using the method of image synthesis technology. There is an advantage that this technique is composed of the combination of a basic image processing. From this result, in the parking support system, the convenience when the driver sets the target parking position can be improved.

Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd.

Presented at the 15th World Congress on Intelligent Transport Systems, November 16-20, 2008, New York, New York

The purpose of this paper is to develop a method for estimation of reliable path ­travel time
using data obtained from the toll collection system on expressways. The toll collection system
records departure and arrival time stamps as well as the identification numbers of arrival and
destination tollgates for all the individual vehicles traveling between tollgates on expressways.
Two major issues reduce accuracy when estimating path­ travel time between an origin and
destination tollgate using transaction data collected by the toll collection system.

Korea Expressway Corporation

University of Virginia

Presented at the 15th World Congress on Intelligent Transport Systems, November 16-20, 2008, New York, New York