2013 IEEE International Conference on Emerging Trends in Computing, Communication and Nanotechnology (ICECCN 2013)

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Prototype of an Underground Multi-Storied Automated Car Parking System

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1,2,3

Eswaran.P, 2Manikandan AVM, 3Saurabh Godha

Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering SRM University, Kancheepuram Dt., TamilNadu, 603203, India (eswaran.p@ktr.srmuniv.ac.in, manikandan.m@ktr.srmuniv.ac.in. godha89@gmail.com)

Abstract This work proposes to develop and implement a prototype model of an efficient unmanned car parking system using microcontroller. Model developed for underground car parking with multiple floors, prevents the usage of the parking space at ground level. Entire process was automated so that it reduces the time wasted by a person to park a car. This model uses two circular floors, with six car-parking slots in each floor. This mechanism has centre primary shaft holding a lift to transport the vehicle to its appropriate parking slot. Various sensors, motors and software were used to detect and transport the car to its allocated parking slot. Hence, this system provides a closed loop control, making it an efficient, accurate, secure and a convenient method proposed for parking cars in both commercial and residential areas. KeywordsMicrocontroller based system, automated car parking, proximity sensors, and underground multi-storied car parking system.

prototype model. System architecture and execution is explained in Section-IV followed by the conclusion. II. BACKGROUND

I.

INTRODUCTION

Parking of cars in a parking area is becoming a difficult task as the number of cars increases when the parking space is limited. Hence, a person have to spend a certain amount of time looking for parking space and thus cause a situation where the traffic would be slowed down and results to congestion. Moreover, the information of available parking spaces is not readily available to the people looking for space to parking. The situation for finding the parking space and traffic congestion in parking areas are frequent. Different approaches have been used to develop a car park management system such as wireless sensor network system [1], a visionbased system [2], [3] and the multi-storied parking system. Multi-storey car parking is becoming increasingly popular as they enable to conserve space. However, parking on multiple floors brings forth its own challenges such as the need of using elevating mechanism for lifting the vehicle from one floor to the other, control systems to coordinate between the vehicle and the lift mechanism and vacant parking space detection. This paper is organized as follows: Section-II reveals the background of related work. Section-III describes the design of

In recent years, parking a car has become a serious problem in large cities with increasing rate of private vehicles [4]. It is an emerging problem to find parking space. The existing parking system does not provide any information about available parking areas and it is difficult to handle the problem related to parking effectively. The existing parking systems provide minimal information on the available parking locations and would require human resources to determine and provide information about the location of the available parking locations. Therefore, the existing parking system would not be able to handle the parking issues effectively. In order to address these problems, parking system with various sensors is deployed to sense, detect and capture information and location of available parking space [1]. This system, which utilizes sensors in each parking space, would provide information on the status of each car park locations. However, the cost of installing sensors in each parking bay might prove to be prohibitive [5] as the cost of installing sensors would increase with the increase in the number of parking slots. Vision based parking system was developed as an alternative to the ordinary system to detect available parking bay locations [2], [3]. This method of detecting and locating available parking locations using a vision based system has proven to be robust and cost effective where only a minimal number of cameras are needed. Automated car parking relies on the technology that is used for mechanical handling and data retrieval. In this system, the driver leaves the car in an entrance module. The lift mechanism then transports the car to an allocated parking slot. During peak time, a wait may be involved before entering or leaving. The wait period depends on loading passengers and luggage that occurs at the entrance and exit locations. This blocks the entrance or exit from being available to others. Whether the retrieval of vehicles is faster in an automatic car

978-1-4673-5036-5/13/$31.00 2013 IEEE

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parking system or a self-park car park depends on the parking layout design and number of exits. III. DESIGN OF PROPOSED PROTOTYPE MODEL The software tools used in the development of prototype are MPlab C compiler to develop the code, PIC microcontroller kit - to program the controller and OrCAD to test the circuit and develop PCB. The prototype model is shown in fig.1, 2, and 3. A GUI of parking slot is provided at the ground floor, which displays number of cars parked in each floor, displays vacant parking space in a particular floor. Every parking slot works independently has at least one proximity sensor, conveyer belt with transport mechanism along with DC motor drive. The lift section has separate DC motor, which can be controlled to rotate about 360 degrees. It also has position sensor, conveyer belt and transport mechanism. The amplified signals from all sensors are fed to the microcontroller and it displays the

The design of automatic car parking system enables the parking of vehicles, floor after floor and thus reducing the space used. The entire process control should be automatic which helps to reduce the time wasted by a person to park a car. In this prototype design, two circular floors, with six cars parking slots in each floor was made. It also consists of a primary rotating shaft has 360 degree freedom about vertical axis, holding a lift to transport the vehicle to its appropriate parking area. This model was developed with DC motor, and various proximity sensors to detect and transport the car to its allocated parking slot.

number of cars parked in each floor.

Fig. 2. Internal (Top) view of the Prototype model

Fig. 1. Model of the proposed underground car parking system

The proposed system has to be implemented at least as a prototype to understand its pros and cons. This prototype model was implemented with the following hardware and software. The hardware requirements for the prototype are PIC 16F877A Microcontroller, proximity sensors, relays and relay driver, DC motors, LCD & Keypad, Mechanical structure and miscellaneous components.

When a car enters the lift, the sensor which is installed there, detects its entry and communicates to the main controller. Then, the software checks for the nearest available parking slot, displays it to the user and asks for a password for security. The lift is then activated to take the car to the allocated slot. The conveyor belts on the lift mechanism and on the parking slot coordinates, rotates to transports the car into its allocated space. Once the car is parked, the count will be increased by one in that particular floor. This entire process is reversible for retrieval of car. Hence, this system design provides an efficient, accurate, secure and a convenient method for parking cars in both commercial and residential areas.

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car entry program. The system will first initialize the motors for operation, and will ask the user if he want to park or retrieve the car. If the user selects entry, the sensor at the lift will sense for the car. Once the car is detected, the controller will sense and detect the location of available parking space. Highest preference is given to the nearest floor to save the time and energy utilized for parking. After the parking position is obtained, the position is displayed to the user and will receive password from the system for security and authentication. Then the lift and conveyer motors are operated one by one to lower the car, to rotate it to its appropriate position and then to park the car in appropriate position. Finally, the lift returns to its neutral position.
Start Error

Wait

Initialize Motors

NO Get Sensor Details YES CAR Detected Entry Loading of CAR Exit Lift Sense NO A

Fig. 3. External (Side) view of the Prototype model (Under construction)

Is Position 1 Filled?

YES

Is Position 2 Filled

YES

Is Position 12 Filled

Display No of parking slot Vacancy

IV.

SYSTEM ARCHITECTURE AND EXECUTION

Park In Slot 1

Display Location and Generate a Authentication Code to the User

A. System Architecture Fig.4 shows the system architecture of the proposed model. It uses PIC16F877A microcontroller, status indicator and LCD display screen with a keypad for the purpose of display and authentication. More number of proximity sensors connected to the microcontroller to detect the presence of nearby objects without any physical contact. DC motors for operating the different conveyer belts and the lift section.
Sensor 1 Sensor 2 Sensor N

Park In Slot 2

Park In Slot 12

Stop

Fig. 5. Flow chart for Car entry program

Authentic Get Code From User

Parking Status Indicator

PIC16F877A
Microcontroller

Is Code Correct? YES

NO

Incorrect Code

Initialize System and Move lift to Respective Slot

Lift Section conveyer motor

Relay 1

Relay 2

Relay 3

Relay N

Is Code For Slot 1?

NO

Is Code For Slot 2?

NO

Is Code For Slot 12?

YES

YES Move Lift to 2

YES Move Lift to 12

Lift Motor 1

Lift Motor 2

Lift Motor N

Move Lift to 1

Exit

Fig. 4. System Architecture of the prototype model

B. Program Execution To implement the fully automated car parking system, there is a need of full-proof system software for handling the parking and retrieving the cars. Fig.5 is the flow chart for the

Fig. 6. Flow chart for Car exit program

Fig.6 is the flow chart for the exit of a particular car out of the system. The system will first initialize the motors for operation, and then they will ask the user whether user wants

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to park or retrieve the car. If the user selects exit, the sequence of execution are as follows. It will request the user to enter the password for authentication. If the authentication is success, the system prompts for the parked slot number, and finds a match for it. If a match is found, the system will then lower the lift to the appropriate floor. The control system sends control signal to rotate conveyer belt transport mechanism of appropriate slot in the backward direction to retrieve the car. Once the car is retrieved, it will move back the lift to its original position and give the car to the user. The whole operation of the system is automated by software programmed into the microcontroller. V. CONCLUSION high. Second, there will be waiting time problem for both parking and retrieval of a car as the system uses singular shaft. ACKNOWLEDGMENT The authors would like to thank the Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering of SRM University to carry out this work successfully. Our heartfelt thanks to Mr. Pushpaak, a former graduate of SRM University for initiating this system design.

REFERENCES
[1] V.W. S. Tang, Y. Zheng, and J. Cao, "An Intelligent Car Park Management System based on Wireless Sensor Networks", Proceedings of the 1st International Symposium on Pervasive Computing and Applications, Aug. 2006, pp. 65-70. Sheng-Fuu Lin, Yung-Yao Chen, "A vision-based parking lot management system", IEEE Conference on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics, Oct. 2006, pp.2897-902. Hamada R.H., Patrick Sebastian, Vision-Based Automated Parking System, Ph.D. thesis, Universiti Teknologi, Petronas, Malaysia, 2010. Q.Wu, C.Huang, S.yuWang, W.chen Chiu, and T.Chen, Robust parking space detection considering interspace correlation, Proceedings of IEEE International Conference on Multimedia and Expo, 2007, pp. 659662. N.True, Vacant parking space detection in static images, Ph.D. thesis, University of California, San Diego, 2007.

An efficient underground-automated multi-storied car parking system prototype design and development was implemented. This system is very much effective as it reduces the fuel usage for car parking and reduces the time wasted by the user to find a car parking slot and the time to park the car. This system is highly accurate and secure against unauthorized access. Though this system has many advantages, there are a few realistic constrains that must not be overlooked. First, the initial cost of building an underground parking system is very

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