Smartphone based car-searching system for large parking lot

Find a car in a large parking lot is a challenge in our daily life. In this paper, a novel car-searching approach based on smartphone for a large parking lot is presented. In the new approach, some QR codes are set up in each area which can identify the parking spots. In addition, shortest path algorithm is used to plan the optimal car-searching path. Considering that some parkers with poor sense of direction may lose in the parking lot, a real-time navigation method is proposed for parker to search the car, which is based on the built-in sensors in smartphone and pedometer principle. The new approach is tested in a large indoor parking lot, and the experimental results show the efficiency of the proposed car-searching system.