On-vehicle video-based parking lot recognition with fisheye optics

The search for free parking space in a crowded car park is a time-consuming and tedious task. Today's park assistance systems provide the driver with acoustic or visual feedback when approaching an obstacle or semi-autonomously navigate the vehicle into the parking lot. However, finding a free parking lot is usually left to the driver. In this paper, we address this search problem via video sensors only. This can be used as a help to the driver to quickly pass a parking deck and, more important, can be regarded as a cornerstone to fully autonomously parking vehicles.