Project Details

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System and application for tracking car parking locations in a multi-story indoor garage

Company: PSU Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

Major(s):
Primary: IE
Secondary: CMPSC
Optional: CMPEN, EE, ESC

Non-Disclosure Agreement: NO

Intellectual Property: NO

In this project, we will develop a hardware system and mobile application for tracking car parking locations in a multi-story, indoor parking garage. During peak hours, drivers have to park in one of the few parking spots that are available, and later on have difficulty in remembering where they parked their car. This application can mitigate the situation by guiding the drivers to their car's parking spot. Similar solutions already exist for outdoor parking using basic GPS technology, but these systems fail to perform underground or in multi-story structures due to the obstructed sky and challenging radio frequency (RF) environment. Although this solution can be used in large parking garages such as at amusement parks or in downtown offices, we plan to test it at the West Parking Deck at Penn State University. Students working on this project will complete 3 primary tasks throughout this project: 1) Investigate the market and evaluate novel methods of tracking a car's location using Bluetooth or other low cost, widely accessible technologies 2) Develop a hardware system and simple mobile app to demonstrate their novel solution in a real-world environment 3) Submit an Invention Disclosure and pursue a patent with assistance from PSU's Office of Technology Transfer (OTT) The OTT will assess the invention and determine possible commercial or protection strategies, so a patent may not directly result from this project. However, the goal is to familiarize the team with the patent application process and students will own any intellectual property (IP) that they produce.