A networked monitoring apparatus, and a monitoring system and monitoring method based on the apparatus, are disclosed. The apparatus includes at least one sensor, a wireless networking module and a processor operably connected to each other and to a power source, within a housing shielding the apparatus components from environmental conditions, which is attachable to at least one mounting point adjacent a plurality of discrete surface areas. The apparatus periodically monitors each of the discrete surface areas, detects a respective occupancy state thereof by a respective entity with the or each sensor, determines a start and/or end of occupancy state by each respective entity, and communicates respective occupancy state data to at least one remote data processing terminal with the wireless networking module. The monitoring system comprises at least one apparatus in data communication with the remote data processing terminal.

A parking assist system for a vehicle includes an environment information obtainer, a storage, a parked vehicle detector, a space determiner, and a parking possibility determiner. The storage stores a reference parking width to be used for parking the vehicle. The parked vehicle detector detects a parked vehicle. The space determiner compares a width of a space next to the parked vehicle with the reference parking width and determines whether the width of the space is greater than or equal to the reference parking width. If the width of the space is found to be greater than or equal to the reference parking width, the parking possibility determiner determines whether a target object is detected at a back side of the space. If the target object is not detected, the parking possibility determiner determines that parking in the space is prohibited.

A chargeability determining method, including before start of transmitting first electric power to a mobile object, wirelessly supplying second electric power to a charging space, detecting whether temperature in the charging space increases after the second electric power is transmitted, and before start of transmitting the first electric power, determining chargeability of the mobile object based on presence information and foreign object information. The presence information indicating whether a charging object is present in the charging space, and the foreign object information indicating whether the temperature in the charging space increases.

Systems, methods, and other embodiments described herein relate to automatically learning parking preferences for a driver and generating parking recommendations. In one embodiment, a method includes generating training data based at least in part on: 1) trajectory data indicating a trajectory of a vehicle during a plurality of parking events, each in which a driver of the vehicle selected a parking candidate from among a plurality of parking candidates, and 2) attribute data indicating attributes of each of the plurality of parking candidates, removing, from the training data, data associated with at least one available parking candidate based on one or more conditions that indicate the driver did not consider the at least one available parking candidate, and training a decision model, based on remaining training data, to estimate a preferred parking candidate for the driver from among a set of available parking candidates.

A parking lot management system includes an infrastructure sensor that is able to detect a sunlight state of a parking space in a parking lot, and a notification device that notifies at least one of a vehicle including a solar power generation function and a user of the parking lot of the sunlight state of each parking space detected by the infrastructure sensor.

A method for controlling a parking of a plurality of autonomous vehicles parking in a row is provided. The method includes determining a minimum row length of the row needed to park the plurality of vehicles in the row taking into account a minimum physical space including an individual vehicle length, determining at least one additional space requirement of at least one of the plurality of vehicles which is temporarily needed by said at least one vehicle for a predefined event, determining a total row length of the row determining a free space in the row, distributing the free space to the row, determining parking information for each of the plurality of vehicles based on the distributed free space, and distributing the parking information to at least some of the plurality of vehicles.

This document describes methods by which a system determines a pickup/drop-off zone (PDZ) to which a vehicle will navigate to perform a ride service request. The system will define a PDZ that is a geometric interval that is within a lane of a road at the requested destination of the ride service request by: (i) accessing map data that includes the geometric interval; (ii) using the vehicle's length and the road's speed limit at the destination to calculate a minimum allowable length for the PDZ; (iii) setting, start point and end point boundaries for the PDZ having an intervening distance that is equal to or greater than the minimum allowable length; and (iv) positioning the PDZ in the lane at or within a threshold distance from the requested destination. The system will then generate a path to guide the vehicle to the PDZ.

A method and apparatus for parking lot metering. The present invention allows multi-space meters to separately manage and control premium parking spaces, such as those for charging electric vehicles or those which supply electric power for engine block heaters in both pay-by-space and pay-and-display systems. Such premium spaces can be managed together over large areas (e.g., a city or region), or may be managed over smaller areas (e.g., the domain of an individual kiosk), or individually per parking space. Management includes pricing, time limits, hours, seasons of operation, and restrictions by vehicle type, and alternative pricing and restrictions for non-premium hours.

A method includes receiving a request from a requesting vehicle to locate a parking spot having capacity to receive solar power, determining a parking location having the capacity to receive solar power, based on a location of the requesting vehicle, the request, and a parking map that indicates an expected charging rate at each of a plurality of parking locations, and transmitting the determined parking location to the requesting vehicle.

A vehicle control device is a vehicle control device mountable in a vehicle and including an acquirer configured to acquire positional information of a frame line of a second parking frame from other vehicle stopped at the second parking frame adjacent to a first parking frame at which the vehicle automatically parks, and a calculator configured to calculate a position of a frame line of the first parking frame on the basis of the positional information of the frame line of the second parking frame acquired by the acquirer.