Parking Assistant

App on the phone
Code that allows the user to select a parking spot
Code that puts a map onto the app
User Interface at the parking lot

Inspiration

We received inspiration for this project idea from our school parking lot. The system there to assign parking to everyone including the students that drive to school is very ineffective. We wanted to devise a new system that would optimize the time it takes students/staff to park and allow them to reduce the long traffic lines that form outside our school.

What it does

We created an app that works along with a user interface at the parking garage. You use the app to connect to the interface and based on where there is space to park you are directed to go there. This allows you to park faster and more efficiently. To find out the fastest way to get to your parking location two algorithm known as A* and Dijkstra's are used to map out the pathway to the parking spot.

How we built it

A swift app built in XCode using swift gets the user location and creates a map of the available parking spots at that location. The user would be able to select a parking spot which would then be marked as parked in the database. The database keeps track of which locations are available. Using a parking lot overhead model, we developed a real-time heuristic algorithm for pathfinding between parking spaces for any car. Optimizing the distance traveled in the minimum time, we implemented an A* pathfinding algorithm to calculate the shortest path between any two points, while keeping track of obstacles or filled parking spaces. This is a separate component that gives step by step instructions on the fastest route to the selected parking spot

Challenges we ran into

Some challenges we ran into are the bugs with Xcode as this was our first time using swift. We learned through an online tutorial and after a lot of fiddling we were able to get the app working. In addition, we had some troubles connecting firebase which we managed to solve.