Article Advise

submitted: Jul 19th 2008 | by: JasonLancaster | Total views: 1 | Word Count: 593 | |

Vehicles of virtually every type and make have been steadily growing over the past ten years. "Entry level" cars by companies like BMW are almost the same size nowadays as a mid-size car from a decade ago. One of the consequences of vehicle sizes expanding is that parking now is harder than ever.

The vehicle growth spurt is most visible in the pickup truck segment, where even such "small" trucks as the Dodge Dakota are now so big that they dwarf earlier models. Full-size trucks too have grown, getting heavier, wider and taller. Toyota vehicles have followed this market trend. When it was first introduced, the Toyota Tundra was a mid-size pickup aimed at the full-size crowd. But when Toyota realized they could fit more buyers in a larger vehicle, the 2007 Tundra redesign ballooned the truck in almost every dimension.

The downside of bigger vehicles is that parking is now a lot harder than it was before. When driving a new Toyota Tundra, you may notice it's difficult to tell where the truck begins and ends. As a solution to these new parking woes, vehicle designers have developed a new tool for drivers called "parking assist."

The "parking assist" is a system of sensors that on most vehicles will be mounted on either front or rear bumpers, or both. The sensors emit an audible beep when the vehicle gets too close to an obstacle, beginning from about 6 feet away, depending on the system, and increasing in frequency until becoming a continuous tone at about 6 inches away. The system can help drivers parallel park, and warn them if something small, such as a mailbox or child, is near the vehicle. If you're curious about how the "parking assist" works, read on.

The system is essentially a set of "eyes", or sensors, mounted on the bumpers, and which emit highly focused sound waves at regular intervals. When the sound waves bump into an object, they will bounce back towards the sensor. Given that the speed of sound in air is fairly consistent, the computer can take the amount of time between the sound being emitted and when it returned to the sensor, and use this information to calculate the distance between the bumper and the object. The same principle is used by submarines in active sonar underwater. The main difference here is that sound travels much better in water than in air, so the submarine sensors have a better range.

While the system is effective when dealing with stationary objects like parked vehicles, posts and garage doors, the sensors are not quite sensitive enough to pick up smaller objects moving past the sensors. This means that small children, animals, or all-terrain vehicles might not generate a warning beep - or at least not a consistent warning beep. So, while parking assist - aka parking sonar - is definitely a useful tool, it is not a replacement for caution. Drivers must still do their best to ensure that there is no one behind or in front of their vehicle when parking.

High-end luxury cars have started to move on to the next generation of parking assist systems, which use a video camera and complex computer program alongside the sound sensor system. The result is more accurate input to the vehicle, which instead of merely warning drivers close to an object, will actually steer and park the vehicle for them. This is very useful with parallel parking - you just have to let the car control the steering, gas and brake. What interesting and amazing technology we have these days!

About the Author

The author Jason Lancaster operates TundraHeadquarters.com, a web site with info, news, and reviews of Toyota Tundra accessories and Tundra parts.

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