Remote Sensing for Parking Spaces

One big issue with all of the parking finder apps is know where the spots are and when are avaialble. Most systems use some kind of senor device embedded in the road/wall to know if the space is open. What if you didn't have to dig up streets or purchase a sensor for every space? What if you made the sensors mobile?

That's the just of a project from a team at Rutgers.

Using ultrasonic sensors, GPS location finders and wireless networks, the Rutgers group thinks it has come up with a cost-effective way to locate the nearest open parking spaces and give drivers choices.

Taxis, municipal vehicles or mall security cars — vehicles that travel frequently in a given area — would be equipped with sensors that measure distances to obstacles and determine whether there is an available parking space. That information would then be fed to an internet server and matched with a map of legal parking spots.

Drivers would then be able to find out, through their GPS navigation systems or smart phones, where parking spaces are open, saving them the time and frustration of looking for a spot.

Using algorithms, the Rutgers team was able to distinguish between parked cars and other objects such as trees or fire hydrants.

"There are some other obstacles that can be on the side of the road that have that same size and eventually we learn over time, if this obstacle never moves, it’s always there, it’s probably not a car," Gruteser said. "If this space is always open and in an area where parking is very crowded, it’s probably not a legal spot."

In tests accuracy was up to 90%. The sensor today would cost a few hundred dollars but could be brought down. At this point the team is looking for a company to test the sensor.

- nj.com

Samsung to Use Earth’s Magnetic Field for Device Locating

...the app maps the geomagnetic fields distorted by indoor magnetic objects. By charting the pattern of the Earth's magnetic field as it warps around household gadgets, such as TVs or fridges, the app can tell the difference between a person's desk at home and a desk at work.

The idea is not to determine address type location but rather, more detailed indoor locations, so that a device can launch different app depending on its position in the house or office. So, put a Galaxy Tablet near the TV/Tivo, it will download shows; put it on the desktop and it will launch e-mail, etc. You have to set up the zone and what happens where, but staffers who saw it at Mobile World Congress said it did the job well. The app is expected by year end.

- ZDnet UK (1,2)

Education Tidbits

Sentinel High School is doing something clever in its drivers ed classes: mapping all the car accidents in Missoula, Montana. Besides getting a healthy respect for how many there are, and the patterns, the students are learning the maps of the city.

- Missoulian

North Carolina State University and Carnegie Mellon University researchers have now developed a shoe-embedded system that may help you find your way. The media is calling it “radar” though that has nothing to do with it. Basically it’s a way to make inertial measurement units (IMUs) more accurate. How? A sensor in the shoe determines distance from the heel to the ground, thus knowing when you are not moving. That resets the IMU to zero and helps keep location more accurate. The team has a paper in IEEE Transactions On Microwave Theory And Techniques.

- ANI

Priyanka Jain, a master’s degree student in the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources at the University of Delaware, is working with the city of Newark to study ways to optimize residential trash pick-up and save costs.

Jain, who is in CANR’s operations research program, explained that the main goal of her work is to “enhance waste collection practices in the city of Newark in terms of minimizing fleet size, total transportation and operational cost, and avoiding time imbalance in between different routes.”

The work was done in ArcGIS.

- UDel

The New York Times offers a lesson for educators (and others) on interpreting the US Census. Here are all the ones tagged “geography.”

- NY Times Learning

A six year old holds the world record for identifying countries on an unlabeled map. It took him 3 minutes. There’s a video if you want to hear his sing song recitation while he points to the colored map.

- World Records Academy

Suggestion: Save USPS By Renting Space on Trucks for Sensors

Michael Ravnitzky,the chief counsel to the chairman of the Postal Regulatory Commission, wrote an op-ed last week that suggested using the fleet of postal trucks as platforms for sensors to detect such things as where cell coverage is unavailable or where chemicals are in the air. That he hopes will help get the service out of the red.

- NY Times via reader Larry

South Africa to Establish Center of Competence on SAR

The South African National Space Agency (Sansa) is establishing a Center of Competence for optronics and synthetic aperture radar (SAR). Ostensibly, the move is to capture high resolution remote sensing imagery to support South African industry.

-Engineering News