WASHINGTON — Apps to help find parking could get a big shot in the arm if cars could be put to use as roving scanners.
Ford Motor Company is looking into a concept to use existing technologies already used in many newer vehicles — including radar, sonar and cameras — to hunt down spaces.
In an experiment conducted with Georgia Tech, researchers found “our vehicle sensors can be used to detect open parking spots as the vehicle drives through a parking lot or even alongside a street that has curb parking,” says Dave McCreadie, Ford’s manager of vehicle infrastructure and smart grid.
Those vehicles could in turn send a huge amount of data to a cloud server, which could then be made available to drivers through an app. McCreadie says this would solve a problem faced by current parking apps, which suffer from a “scarcity” of parking data.
He also says Ford could be willing to partner with other auto manufacturers on the system, so “as many vehicles as possible can participate, and function as mobile probes to detect open parking spaces.”
The existing vehicle sensors are used for features such as adaptive cruise control, collision and lane departure warnings as well as blind-spot detection.
Ford says those using what it has dubbed the “Parking Spotter” system would save time and use less fuel.
There is no timetable for when the technology might be available to drivers.
