PROVIDING GUIDANCE FOR LOCATING STREET PARKING

• US 20120161986A1
• Filed: 01/18/2011
• Published: 06/28/2012
• Est. Priority Date: 12/27/2010
• Status: Abandoned Application

• Current Assignee: ‎AI Incube, Inc.
• Original Assignee: ‎AI Incube, Inc.
• Inventors: Amir, Eyal
• Application Number:
  US13/008,873
• Publication Number:
  US 20120161986A1
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 340/932.2
• CPC Class Codes: G01C 21/3685 the POI's being parking facilities
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 2240/00 Transportation facility access, e.g. fares, tolls or parking
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 50/40 Business processes related to the transportation industry shipping G06Q10/083
• CPC Class Codes: G08G 1/143 inside the vehicles
• CPC Class Codes: G08G 1/144 on portable or mobile units, e.g. personal digital assistant [PDA]
• CPC Class Codes: G08G 1/147 where the parking area is within an open public zone, e.g. city centre
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 4/024 Guidance services
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 4/40 for vehicles, e.g. vehicle-to-pedestrians [V2P]
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 4/44 for communication between vehicles and infrastructures, e.g. vehicle-to-cloud [V2C] or vehicle-to-home [V2H]

Abstract

A facility for providing guidance for locating street parking is described. The facility receives an indication of a geographic location with respect to which provide parking guidance, and determines an effective time for which to provide guidance. The facility then provides parking guidance relating to the indicated location at the effective time for a use.

Claims

1. A computer-readable medium having contents capable of causing a computing system to perform a method for providing guidance for locating street parking, the method comprising:

receiving an indication of a geographic location;

determining an effective time for which to provide guidance;

identifying a plurality of parking segments near the indicated geographic location;

for each of at least a portion of the identified parking segments, determining a probability that available street parking will exist in the parking segment at the effective time; and

causing to be presented to a user, for at least a portion of the parking segments for which a probability is determined, an indication of the probability determined for the parking segment.

2. The computer-readable medium of claim 1 wherein the causing causes to be presented to the user a visual map including the geographic location in which, for the at least a portion of the parking segments for which a probability is determined, a visual indication of the probability determined for the parking segment is shown in connection with the parking segment.

3. The computer-readable medium of claim 2 wherein the shown visual indications of probabilities are numerical probability values.

4. The computer-readable medium of claim 2 wherein the shown visual indications of probabilities are colors each corresponding to a different range of numerical probability values.

5. The computer-readable medium of claim 1 wherein the causing causes to be presented to the user a textual list of a proper subset of the parking segments for which a probability is determined whose probabilities are relatively high.

6. The computer-readable medium of claim 1 wherein the causing causes to be presented to the user, when the user approaches an intersection from which parking segments for which a probability is determined are accessible, indications of the probabilities determined for at least a portion of the parking segments that are accessible from the intersection.

7. The computer-readable medium of claim 1 wherein each of the determined probabilities is a probability that that available free street parking will exist in the parking segment at the effective time.

8. The computer-readable medium of claim 1 wherein each of the determined probabilities is a probability that that available pay street parking will exist in the parking segment at the effective time.

9. The computer-readable medium of claim 1 wherein each of the determined probabilities is a probability that that available permit street parking will exist in the parking segment at the effective time.

10. One or more computer memories collectively storing a street parking estimated availability data structure, comprising:

for each of a plurality of parking segments near a destination location, with respect to an effective time, an entry containing information that;

identifies the parking segment, and

indicates a probability that available street parking will exist in the parking segment at the effective time,

such of the contents of the data structure may be used to select parking segments in which to seek street parking.

11. A method in a computing system for providing guidance for locating street parking, comprising:

determining an effective time for which to provide guidance;

determining a parking segment for which to provide guidance; and

using historical observations about the availability of street parking in one or more parking segments to determine a probability that available street parking will exist in the determined parking segment at the effective time.

12. The method of claim 11, further comprising outputting the determined probability.

13. The method of claim 11, further comprising storing the determined probability.

14. The method of claim 11 wherein historical observations about the availability of street parking in the identified parking segment are used in the determination of the determined probability.

15. The method of claim 11 wherein historical observations about the availability of street parking in the parking segments identified as being similar to the identified parking segment are used in the determination of the determined probability.

16. The method of claim 15 wherein the determined parking segment and the identified parking segments all have segment attributes, further comprising identifying the identified parking segments as being similar to the determined parking segment based upon a similarity of the segment attributes of the identified parking segments to the segment attributes of the determined parking segment.

17. The method of claim 11, further comprising:

receiving an indication from a person who passed through a selected one of the one or more parking segments at an observation time of the level of parking availability in the selected parking segment at the observation time; and

in response to determining that the observation time of the received indication is sufficiently close to a current time, using the level of parking availability indicated by the received indication for the selected parking segment in determining the probability, to the exclusion of at least one earlier historical observation for the selected parking segment.