Drone Parking Assistant
This is a startup project idea I have had for a while. This involves sending drones into large parking lots to help people find an open spot to park. The goal is to alleviate traffic in large parking lots and help people save time parking. The development will begin on August 28th.
I came up with the idea for this project through both my time working on an autonomous drone and my experience trying to find a parking spot at my University. The parking lot was too small for all the students attending, yet it was also big enough to hide some parking spots which were still available. There were countless times when I would pass by an empty parking spot unknowingly because it was between two large vehicles. Everyone else who has tried parking in the same institution has had similar experiences. I found that a great way to solve this issue is to see the parking lot from an aerial perspective. My idea is an autonomous drone that will search for an open parking space and hover over it to guide a car there. Once a car has parked in that spot, the drone will then move to the next open spot and wait for a car to park there. This could be done using GPS to lock the drone to a certain area. As for finding the actual open spot, this is something that can be done either by using Aruco markers or looking for line using OpenCV. I believe the former will be easier in practice, but more difficult to set up for the consumer.