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Almost every kind of vehicle has experienced a growth in size over the past decade. An “entry-level” car by a company such as BMW nowadays might be near the size and weight of a mid-size car ten years ago. As vehicles have gotten bigger, parking has become harder and harder.

The vehicle growth spurt is most visible in the pickup truck segment, where even such “small” trucks as the Dodge Dakota are now so big that they dwarf earlier models. Full-size trucks too have grown, getting heavier, wider and taller. Toyota vehicles have followed this market trend. When it was first introduced, the Toyota Tundra was a mid-size pickup aimed at the full-size crowd. But when Toyota realized they could fit more buyers in a larger vehicle, the 2007 Tundra redesign ballooned the truck in almost every dimension.

The downside of bigger vehicles is that parking is now a lot harder than it was before. When driving a new Toyota Tundra, you may notice it’s difficult to tell where the truck begins and ends. As a solution to these new parking woes, vehicle designers have developed a new tool for drivers called “parking assist.”

“Parking assist” is, on most vehicles, a system of sensors mounted on one or both sets of bumpers which beeps as the vehicle approaches an object. The beeps usually begin from about 6 feet away from an obstacle, and increase in frequency as you approach, becoming a continuous tone at about 6 inches from the obstacle. Beeping frequency and onset vary between different systems. The parking assist is a great tool for parallel parking, and can also serve as a warning if a small object such as a fence post or child is near your vehicle. But how does it work?

The system is essentially a set of “eyes”, or sensors, mounted on the bumpers, and which emit highly focused sound waves at regular intervals. When the sound waves bump into an object, they will bounce back towards the sensor. Given that the speed of sound in air is fairly consistent, the computer can take the amount of time between the sound being emitted and when it returned to the sensor, and use this information to calculate the distance between the bumper and the object. The same principle is used by submarines in active sonar underwater. The main difference here is that sound travels much better in water than in air, so the submarine sensors have a better range.

Although the sensors can effectively detect stationary objects such as parked vehicles and garage doors, they’re not sensitive enough for smaller mobile objects, such as animals or children. These objects might not generate a warning beep, or at least not consistently. Therefore, drivers still need to use caution and be aware of their vehicle’s surroundings when parking. Parking assist, also called parking sonar, is definitely a useful tool, but is not a replacement for a careful driver.

High-end luxury cars have started to move on to the next generation of parking assist systems, which use a video camera and complex computer program alongside the sound sensor system. The result is more accurate input to the vehicle, which instead of merely warning drivers close to an object, will actually steer and park the vehicle for them. This is very useful with parallel parking - you just have to let the car control the steering, gas and brake. What interesting and amazing technology we have these days!

Tags: Cars

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