Two-Carrier Cooperative Parking Robot: Design and Implementation

Parking robots have been designed to alleviate parking stress in crowded areas. Existing models occupy large spaces and have limited adaptability to uneven ground. This paper aims to enhance the performance of parking robots by proposing a leader-follower-control based two-carrier Cooperative Parking Robot (CPR). In this system, two omnidirectional carriers operate on a tight cooperative transporting algorithm to achieve steady motion in their collaborative handling and transportation of the target car into the designated parking space. The novel CPR was designed, modeled, and implemented. The results indicate that the proposed CPR approached the targeted car and maintained a consistent position and heading angle in its cooperative parking operation at the speed of 0.6 m/s. The parking robot exhibited significant improvement in its adaptability to cars and uneven ground, and its compact configuration reduced its space occupation. Therefore, the proposed CPR has been proven robust for autonomous cooperative parking operations.