Using exit time predictions to optimize self automated parking lots

Abstract

Private car commuting is heavily dependent on the subsidisation that exists in the form of available free parking. However, the public funding policy of such free parking has been changing over the last years, with a substantial increase of meter-charged parking areas in many cities. To help to increase the sustainability of car transportation, a novel concept of a self-automated parking lot has been recently proposed, which leverages on a collaborative mobility of parked cars to achieve the goal of parking twice as many cars in the same area, as compared to a conventional parking lot. This concept, known as self-automated parking lots, can be improved if a reasonable prediction of the exit time of each car that enters the parking lot is used to try to optimize its initial placement, in order to reduce the mobility necessary to extract blocked cars. In this paper we show that the exit time prediction can be done with a relatively small error, and that this prediction can be used to reduce the collaborative mobility in a self-automated parking lot. I. INTRODUCTION Parking is a major problem of car transportation, with important implications in traffic congestion and urban land- scape. It has been shown that parking represents 75% of the variable costs of automobile commuting (1), supported by a major public subsidisation of the space devoted to car parking, where the user does not pay in more than 95% of the occasions (2). The sustainability of car transportation is nowadays facing several challenges. The number of cars in many cities has reached a level where the road infrastructure is unable to avoid systematic traffic congestions. In addition, the high cost of fossil fuels and pollutant emission levels are creating significant challenges for the sustainability of private car commuting in major cities. Tolls and prohibition of circu- lation in one or two week days for a given vehicle are already in place in some of our cities. Technology is trying to mitigate these challenges faced by car transportation. Zero- emissions electric propulsion and connected navigation are two examples of technologies that can help making car transportation more sustainable. Technology has been focusing however in moving cars, disregarding the parked period of these cars, which represen