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6
Car-Where Project Wins First Place at Research Expo
N
ext time you forget where you
parked your car, think of
Nathan Faber, '07, who won
first place at this year's Northeastern
University Research and Scholarship
Expo for his work developing Car-Where,
a clever system for locating a parked
vehicle using radio-relay devices and
a multi-hop wireless network.
"People forget where they've parked
their cars all the time," says Faber, like
when they've gone on a trip and left
their car in an airport parking lot, or
parked in a big lot at the shopping
mall. "They'll either spend a lot of time
walking around searching for their car,
or they'll hit the panic button [on their
fob] to make the car's alarm go off and
annoy everyone around them while
they try to find their car."
Car-Where takes the guesswork and
annoyance out of such a search.
The technology behind this system
is remarkably simple. In a real-world
scenario, small devices, called motes,
are placed in parking meters and in
kiosks located within the selected area,
such as a parking garage or along a
street, and also in cars. Each mote has
a tiny microprocessor and transmitter
inside of it. When you want to find your
car, you point your key fob at one of
the kiosks and it relays a signal via the
parking meters until it locates the meter
closest to your car. It then transmits the
signal back to the kiosk, which displays
a message letting you know the exact
location of your car.
Eventually, the device could be
used for other purposes, like helping
you locate an empty space or even
reserve a parking spot via the Internet
or your cell phone, says Faber, who's
majoring in computer science, with a
minor in business.
Faber's adviser, Professor Ravi
Sundaram, came up with the initial idea
of using parking meters, motes, and
multi-hop networks, and the two have
spent the past several years developing
and designing the system, which is the
subject of Faber's bachelor's thesis. To
build their display, they bought several
parking meters through eBay, plus toy
cars and off-the-shelf microcomputers
that have the capability of communicat-
ing with one another.
"Nathan did a lot of the work pro-
gramming the motes and getting them
to work," says Sundaram. "He built
them, programmed them and set up
the demo. He's an excellent student
and runs with very little guidance."
Faber had one of the only physical
demos at the research expo and his Car-
Where project was selected as the top entry
out of 175 submissions. He and Sundaram
are currently filing for three patents on the
system. Their next step is to begin talking
to parking meter manufacturers, garage
operators, and municipal authorities, to
see if anyone is interested in turning this
project into a real-life parking solution.
"People forget where they've
parked their cars all the time.
They'll either spend a lot of
time walking around search-
ing for their car, or they'll hit
the panic button to make the
car's alarm go off."
Associate Professor Ravi Sundaram (left) and Nathan Faber developed an award-winning
system that can help people locate parked cars, find empty parking spaces, or even reserve
parking spots in advance.