By Mark Walters
Someday cars will have no steering wheels, because they will drive themselves. Spooky, huh? You may think that is just a fantasy, but self-parking cars have been in development for a few years. Now it looks like Toyota may be the first manufacturer to hit the market with a real, no fooling, self-parking car. Even better, it is a hybrid so it will even drive right by gas stations – most of the time.
I can’t tell you exactly how the Toyota system works, but the Car Parking Aid system being developed at Roke Manor Research combines information from a number of on-board sensors to help execute parking maneuvers quickly and accurately.
The system uses millimeter wave radar sensors and advanced image processing algorithms. This sensor fusion approach enables parking spaces to be measured more accurately and robustly than would be possible using either technology alone. I don’t know exactly what all that means, but then I still can’t program my VCR. Continue Reading
