Vision Based Parking Lot Monitoring

Desired Functions

2009-03-09T04:21:00.001-07:00

We've decided to stop working on our demo system at this point and start thinking about the desired functions that can improve our system, because we are going to continue this project in next quarter and possibly into summer.

Here is the desired function at this point:

1. The Admin Page with Handling Ambiguities

Create the admin page that has an access to the database of the each parking lot status and handle the ambiguities that are created by computer vision detection system.

2. The Registered User with Caller ID

First, get the user registered by caller Id and store the preferred parking lot.
Then, give the user an option by pressing 0 to immediately access the information of the preferred parking lot.

3. SMS Base

Create an option to send a text message containing the parking information to the user who registered his or her cell phone number.

4. More Type of Spots

Find a way to handle V(visitor)spots and meter spaces later on.

5. Parking Lots Outside the Main Campus

Find a way to help the user who park outside the campus such as East Parking Lot.

6. GPS Information

Find a way to help the user who has no idea about where the specific parking lot is located. In the future, sending an information to the GPS in car will help a lot.

7. Improvement for Visitors

Now this system is intended for the experienced user who comes to UCSD everyday. The system will also have to account for the visitor who has never come to the UCSD.

8. iPhone Application

iPhone Application will help the user check out all of the nearest parking status.

Serge just suggested to do a literature review on academic or commercial systems for parking space vacancy alerting. It will help us brainstorming for the better functions.

Here are the links provided by Serge. Hopefully we can come up with more functions for the final presentation.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/12/business/12newpark.html

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/04/14/MNTO104818.DTL

http://scialert.net/asci/ascidetail.php?doi=itj.0000.7667.7667&kw=

http://www.scialert.net/qredirect.php?doi=itj.0000.7665.7665&linkid=pdf

http://www.parkwhiz.com/about/releases/3-23-2007.php

http://www.edmunds.com/insideline/do/News/articleId=118824

http://www.mlive.com/news/ann-arbor/index.ssf/2009/01/use_your_cell_phone_parking_gee.html

Updated Demo

2009-03-09T04:03:00.000-07:00

We've integrated JAVA code into the XML file by transforming JAVA code into JSP file. Now that JSP file is the simulator that create the random parking status. We also updated our demo system using the simulator.

Now the user can call 303 - 800 - 2532.

He or she can press 1 or say the name of the location to navigate through the menu.

Touch Tone

Press 1 for touch tone

"Press 1 for Warren, Press 2 for Revelle................."

Press 1 for Warren

"Press 1 for Calit2, 2 for Warren Lecture Hall....."

Press 1 for Calit2

"2A Spots 3B Spots and 5 S Spots are available..."

Then, go back to top menu

Voice Recog Menu

Say "Calit2" or "Warren Lecture Hall"

"5A Spots 7B Spots and 2 S Spots are available..."

Meeting with Ganz

2009-03-02T14:48:00.000-08:00

We have been working on accessing a text file to get information of available A,B, and S spaces. After meeting with Ganz last wednesday, we modified our voiceXML menu to be as simple as possible and tried to write a JAVA code that could read the refreshed data. We first wrote a Java code that reads a simple table in a text file. Now its modified to read each A,B, and S spots from different places. Ganz is going to help integrating the JAVA code into XML menu we created. We had to spend much more time than expected, because we were not sure how to import other languaes or features into XML files. We trying to read each spot from each location by reading an information from matrix stored is multi dimensional array that looks like a figure below.

Goal for this week:

1. Create a demo system with complete menu that can access a text
file to find out number of available spots.
2. Try to optimize the menu and decide how to handle some exceptions

Some feedbacks from our friends

2009-02-20T02:24:00.000-08:00

Most feedbacks were like the problem we already talked about in class or office hour. One useful comment was to register the user with phone number. Then, the user will have an option to press 0 and directly access the information of the parking lot status that the user pre-set via web page. We actually thout about including this feature and we can easily identify and store the callerID using Voxeo Designer. However, in order to test this option, we are probably going to have to have a data base. We will decide later this week to whether include this option or not.

Updated Voxeo Designer project for Demo

2009-02-20T02:13:00.000-08:00

We've finally created a demo using Voxeo Designer.

Try to cal l 202-683-9117 and follow the prompt message.

We have not completed menu yet. However, if keep pressing 1 to look at the parking lot in revelle college, you will finally hear the message "Available parking space for p 100 is some. If you want to go back to main menu say main or press 1, otherwise you can press 2 to hang up thank you." We still need to finish up other sub-menu and re-prompts message and so on.

Also, we are still not sure how to access the parking lot data. One of the step in this designer has the option to access data by specifying the URL. At this point, we probably need to set up a web page containing a sample data. We are not very familiar with web-page or web-server. Next week, we are going to move on to create a admin page and work on accessing the data.

Voxeo Designer

2009-02-18T14:20:00.001-08:00

We just found out that Voxeo website has the icon based visual design tool. This tool has many powerful feature built-in such as making a choice by pressing diffrent touch pad or accessing the webserver. We are still learing more about this tool and this tool will help a lot creating out demo system.

Two problems

2009-02-09T12:54:00.000-08:00

1. When the nearest parking lot is full

The solution we came up with this problem is to direct the user
to next nearest parking lot (e.g. if parking lot for Calit2(P502) is full, direct it to warren lecture hall parking lot(P401))
If this parking lot is also full, direct user to the previous menu of choosing other college,
or building.

2. Refreshing parking lot status

We did some research on refreshing xml files and direct xml file to specified website.
In case of directing xml file to specified website, users can choose a menu from the
website (e.g. nba.com, they can hear results of different games via phone)
Needs to use php and/or java script along with xml.
Still need to come up with how to refresh the data received from Catherine's black box.

State Chart Diagram

2009-02-04T13:21:00.001-08:00

This is the rough State Chart Diagram drawn using starUML(Free UML tool).

This week, we learned about the basics of UML specifications and UML tools to visualize our menu. At this point, we are not very clear how to deal with the parking lots that are full.

More about VocieXML

2009-01-28T14:59:00.000-08:00

While Kyumin was trying to implement the menu we created last week, I went through the tutorial line by line to find out more about voiceXML. I have found some interesting features of voiceXML that could possibly be used later on.

1. Using audio files - Recording and encoding a sound file for inclusion into application

2. Outbound dialing - Placing an outbound call to the user

3. Capturing callerID - To keep track of callerID

4. Server Side Languages - ASP, JSP, and PHP....

Process of reading a file

2009-01-28T13:50:00.000-08:00

We worked on reading a file on our vxml application for getting info on parking lots.
what happens here is then instead of doing a menu with voice recognition or touch tone, we are simply transferring to a new page, and then using text-to-speech to read the values inside the transferred page.

VoiceXML Menu Overview

2009-01-21T15:01:00.001-08:00

This will be a general overview of VoiceXML Menu. When the
user makes a call, it will prompt this message to user.
This menu is intended for UCSD professors, faculties, and students
who come to school on a regular basis.

A. "Press 1 for touchtone menu and press 2 for voice recognition menu"

1. "Press 1 if you are going to Revelle college"
"Press 2 if you are going to Muir college"
"Press 3 if you are going to Marshall college"
"Press 4 if you are going to Warren college"
"Press 5 if you are going to Eleanor Roosevelt college"
"Press 6 if you are going to Sixth college"
(e.g. user pressed 4)
then it will say
"Press 1 if you want to go to Calit 2" (P502)
"Press 2 if you want to go to Warren Lecture Hall" (P403)
(e.g. user pressed 2)
then "P403 has no vacant A spots, 7 vacant B spots, etc. and
P403 is located south east of Warrent Lecture Hall. Press 1
if you want to search for other parking spaces"
(e.g. user pressed 1, then it goes back to step A)

2. "Name the location you want to go. For example Calit 2"
(e.g. user said "Calit 2")
then "P502 has 10 vacant A spots, 15 vacant B spots, etc. and
P502 is located north side of Calit 2. Say yes if you want to search for other parking spaces"
(e.g. user said "yes", then it goes back to step A)

P502 satellite image and schematic

2009-01-19T21:21:00.000-08:00

We tried to find a vacant space by human visual system in parking lot 502.

Even though this satellite image is the best quality we can get now, some of the spaces are very difficult to distinguish because of the shadows in some spaces.

To handles these uncertainties created by shadows,

we labled each space with 5 different categories.

1 - occupied

0 - vacant

v - most likely vacant (the spaces that are partially covered by the shadow)

m - most likely occupied(the spaces are covered by the shadow, but the car is still visible)

n - not sure(the spaces that are too dark to identify)

The purpose of this labeling is to handle uncertainties before sending information to the users.

How it works (VoiceXML)

2009-01-12T14:36:00.000-08:00

We did some research on VoiceXML:
Step 1. Go to evolution.voxeo.com and create a free acount
Step 2. Start with VoiceXML tutorial
Step 3. Link our voice application (e.g. Hello CSE190) to a phone number

number to call (Hello CSE190) : 213-270-1432
number to call (Voice Recognition) : 213-270-1461

System Overview

2009-01-03T17:54:00.001-08:00