Automatic parking identification and vehicle guidance with road awareness

Advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) are becoming more common in safety and convenience applications. The computer vision based ADAS described in this paper, is an add-on system, suitable to variety of cars. It detects vacant legal parking spots, and safely guides the vehicle into the selected parking. Detection can be performed in both indoor parking lots and along roadsides. The system is composed of three standard computer-connected webcams, which are attached to the vehicle. Upon slowing down, the system starts searching automatically for a right hand-side vacant parking spot, while being aware to parking color signs. Once detected, the parking orientation is determined, and the driver is notified. Once a parking is selected by the driver, the relative position between the vehicle and the parking spot is monitored. Vocal and visual parking guidance instructions are presented to the driver. In addition, if during parking, an object is moving on the road towards the car, a safety alert is given. The system is universal in the sense that, as an add-on system, it can be installed on any private 4-wheeled vehicle, and is suited to urban driving environment.