published_or_final_version / Urban Planning / Master / Master of Science in Urban Planning

Nowadays it is very hard to find available spots in public parking lots and even harder at facilities such as universities and sports venues. A system that provides drivers with parking availability and parking lot occupancy will allow users find a parking space much easier and faster. This thesis presents a system for automatic parking lot occupancy computation using motion tracking. The use of computer vision techniques and low cost video sensors makes it possible to have an accurate system that allows drivers to find a parking spot. Video bitrate and quality reduction and its impact on performance were studied. It was concluded that high quality video is not necessary for the proposed algorithm to obtain accurate results. The results show that relatively inexpensive and low bandwidth networks can be used to develop large scale parking occupancy applications. / by Francisco Alberto Justo Torres. / Thesis (M.S.C.S.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2013. / Includes bibliography. / Mode of access: World Wide Web. / System requirements: Adobe Reader.

After describing the development of the ISDV, this thesis studies the energy management which can improve the energy efficiency. It is shown that the traditional electric vehicle (EV) is not capable of managing the energy required for one driving cycle because it has only a single traction motor. This thesis proposes and examines a new way to manage electrical energy in which torque is distributed among different in-wheel motors to achieve a higher level of overall energy efficiency, which has been enhanced and demonstrated in various driving cycles. / Thereafter, the thesis studies two aspects of benefits the ISDV can bring to parking. One is in space efficiency, defined as the ratio of the total space occupied by the vehicle in its final parked state over the whole area covered by the parking lot. Comparison of the ISDV and traditional vehicles in parking proves that the ISDV afford a higher level of space efficiency. The other aspect is the parking time. It is tested experimentally in the hardware-in-loop (HIL) system, and the motions of traditional vehicles, the zero radius turning motion, and the free motion of the ISDV are compared. The less time for parking demonstrates the easiness to steer the ISDV. / Throughout the history of human civilization, vehicles have played a significant role by connecting people in various locations. They have thus boosted the progress of civilization and made our lives more convenient. However, as the number of vehicles on the road has increased, the convenience, which vehicles provide, has gradually turned into inconvenience in three respects: 1) the energy consumed by vehicles accounts for a large proportion of total energy consumption, which is in an ever-increasing trend; 2) more parking space is needed, a significant proportion of which is not for parking itself but for enabling the vehicle to be navigated to its final parking slot; 3) the effort required to park a car is also troublesome, causing the driver to spend much more time in a crowded parking lot. / To alleviate these three problems, I develop a methodology to design an independent steering and driving vehicle (ISDV). It brings together the robotic technologies of steer-by-wire, drive-by-wire, four-wheel-independent-steering, and four-wheel-independent-driving. All four wheels of the ISDV can be steered independently, so that vehicle rotation and translation can be decoupled from each other. Omni-directional motions such as zero radius turning (ZRT) and lateral parking (LP) are realized, thereby enhancing the agility of the vehicle. In contrast with omni-directional wheeled mobile robots, this vehicle is targeted at serving as a human carrier or even as a vehicle carrier in the future. / Qian, Huihuan. / Adviser: Yangsheng Xu. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 73-03, Section: B, page: . / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2010. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 149-159). / Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Electronic reproduction. [Ann Arbor, MI] : ProQuest Information and Learning, [201-] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Abstract also in Chinese.

Thesis (M. Arch.)--Carleton University, 2004. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 100-102). Also available in electronic format on the Internet.

Since the beginning of the 21st Century, the world has seen the rapid development of the so-called "sharing economy" or collaborative consumption (Botsman, 2010). One of the first areas affected by the shared economy is vehicle ownership. With the emergence of several new providers of mobility services, such as Uber and car2go, there has been the promise of changes to the traditional way of owning and using a vehicle (Wong, Hensher, & Mulley, 2017). One potential consequence of shared mobility services is the reduction in vehicle ownership. At the same time, cities are trying to anticipate these changes by reducing the amount of space dedicated to parking, including parking requirements for residential developments. This thesis aims to assess the extent to which new shared mobility services (specifically, carsharing, bikesharing, and ridehailing) and travel demand management strategies (especially parking requirements and transit pass availability) relate to vehicle ownership among residents of multifamily dwellings. To do this, we use a web-based survey targeted to residents of multifamily apartments from Portland, Oregon. With these data, we built a multinomial logistic of the number of the vehicles owned as a function of socio-demographics, built environment, parking supply, transit passes, and three forms of shared mobility services. Results suggest that there is a strong association between shared mobility use and car ownership. However, it is not as significant as the effects of income, household size, distance to work, transit pass ownership, or even parking availability. Carshare use was negatively associated with the number of household vehicles, suggesting that it may be a useful tool in reducing car ownership. For respondents with higher education and income levels, increased carshare use was associated with fewer cars. Ridehail use, however, was not as clearly associated with reducing vehicle ownership and the effect was much smaller than that of carsharing. Parking availability in the building also has a significant and positive association with vehicle ownership. In sites with no parking available, there is an increased chance of the household owning less than two or more vehicles. However, this effect seems to disappear with the increased use of shared mobility. For all income levels, monthly use of ridehail and carshare between two and three times may decrease the odds of owning two or more vehicles. The use of both options, relaxing parking requirements and shared mobility availability, seems the best strategy to reduce vehicle ownership. In the short term, it is an alternative to those residents that decide to get rid of one or all cars but still are not ready to give up using cars. For the long term, a new relationship with vehicle ownership can be built now for the younger generation.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / In recent years, there have been a lot of technology innovations to automate the day to day processes done by every person. These days the automobile manufacturers introduce new features in their cars, in order to improve customer experience, like Adaptive cruise control, Parallel park assist, etc. The objective of this thesis is to model an automated parallel parking system and to simulate the system behavior, by taking into account the high level events which happen when a car is parallel parked. The tool used in this thesis to model and simulate the system is Hybrid Petri net (HPN), which is versatile to model the real life systems. Chapter 1 deals with a brief introduction of the related work in Hybrid Petri net modeling of real life systems, automatic parallel parking systems and how the concept for modeling the parallel parking system was developed. Chapter 2 deals with the general introduction about Discrete, Continuous and Hybrid Petri nets and their dynamics which are essential for understanding this thesis. Chapter 3 deals with the development of the model and the various stages in the model development. Errors encountered in each stage is briefly discussed and the improvements are discussed in the next stage of development. This chapter concludes with the final integrated model and operation of the model. Chapter 4 deals with the discussion of results obtained when the model is tested in MATLAB and SIMHPN (which is a Matlab embedded simulation program). The results are compared, the system behavior is observed and the purpose of the thesis is justified. In Chapter 5, a conclusion is provided to summarize the entire thesis.