Template Mask based Parking Car Slots Detection in Aerial Images

The increase in vehicle purchases worldwide is having a very significant impact on the availability of parking spaces. In particular, since it is difficult to secure a parking space in an urban area, it may be of great help to the driver to check vehicle parking information in advance. However, the current parking lot information is still operated semi-manually, such as notifications. Therefore, in this study, we propose a system for detecting a parking space using a relatively simple image processing method based on an image taken from the sky and evaluate its performance. The proposed method first converts the captured RGB image into a black-and-white binary image. This is to simplify the calculation for detection using discrete information. Next, a morphological operation is applied to increase the clarity of the binary image, and a template mask in the form of a bounding box indicating a parking space is applied to check the parking state. Twelve image samples and 2181 total of test, were used for the experiment, and a threshold of 40% was used to detect each parking space. The experimental results showed that information on the availability of parking spaces for parking users was provided with an accuracy of 95%. Although the number of experimental images is somewhat insufficient to address the generality of accuracy, it is possible to confirm the possibility of parking space detection with a simple image processing method.