Description:Recently, with the increase of vehicles in the cities, parking has become a huge problem at places like shopping malls, theaters, etc. The objective of this proposed system is to provide:
An interactive web application for parking management.
To reduce human effort and parking time.
To create a cost effective automated parking system.
Make parking safe, secure and authentic.

Users can check the status of the free parking slot available at the entrance itself by checking the LCD display or going through the web application by scanning the QR code which will be available at the entrance. After scanning and filling basic information. The webcam will turn on and detect the license plate and store the user id, license plate number and time stamp onto the database and display on the web page the unique user id and the allocated parking slot number.

In case if a vehicle is wrongly parked at the provided slot, the user can raise a grievance through the web application and can get a new slot allocated.

At the exit of the parking, the webcam will automatically turn on and detect the license plate details and display the total time the vehicle was parked and the amount needed to be paid and the user can go through the billing process after which they can exit the parking area.

If a user parks his vehicle at the wrong location then the user will be charged a penalty which needs to be paid during the billing process and the user who had to face the inconvenience will get a discount.

The proposed system is the implementation of both software block and hardware block. The Software block mainly consists of creating web applications and license plate detection and recognition.
Creating Web application:

There are many frameworks for creating a Web application like Asp.net, ReactJS, Symfony, etc, in this proposed system a python web framework called Flask is used. The web application is made presentable and interactable by using HTML, Bootstrap and javascript. Flask is a python language based micro web framework, it was created by Armin Ronacher of Pocoo in 2004. Flask is used in this proposed system because it supports extensions that can add application features and utility libraries like jinja templates.

License plate detection and Recognition:

There are many machine learning algorithms for object detection and recognition like OpenCv, CNN model, Haar cascade, YOLO version models, etc. For License plate detection and image augmentation the YOLOv5 model with OpenCv is used and for character recognition, a python library called Pytesseract is used here. The license plate details are then stored in the database for further processes. YOLOv5 performs object detection using clustering algorithm, which uses focus structure with CSPdarknet53 as a backbone, where feature extraction is performed, PANet as the neck, where feature fusion is performed and the Yolo layer as the Head, which performs detection. Where it divides the image into a grid system and detects the object within itself.

The hardware block consists of the power adapter, Raspberry pi, Arduino Uno, Logitut webcam(720p), Servo motor, IR sensors, LCD display and WiFi router. The power adapter has 5 volts and 3 amps output, over USB Type-C is required to power Raspberry pi4 and other components. Raspberry Pi can transfer data 10 times faster, as it has 4GB Ram and 64Gb microsd card with two USB 2 ports and two USB 3 ports. This module also includes Gigabit Ethernet, along with onboard wireless networking and bluetooth.

Arduino Uno microcontroller is used to configure the servo motors which will control the gate movements. Logitut webcam with 720p quality is used to capture images from the live stream and stores the image.

The Infrared proximity sensor is used for obstacle sensing, when a car is in front of the gate this will provide a digital output to raspberry pi indicating that a vehicle is present. LCD display is used to display the available slot in the parking area which is connected with the raspberry pi module. The proposed system is running on a local server, to establish a local network the wifi router is used through which all the modules will work on the same network.

The main processing unit of the system is raspberry pi model 4. HD web camera is interfaced with this minicomputer. The IR sensor interfaced with the GPIO pin detects new vehicle entry and it will close the
gate using servo motors. The LCD display attached to the controller displays the count of free slots available and number of cars parked. The display will be fixed outside of the parking lot in a manner to be visible for all vehicles passing on the road.

When the vehicle is at the entrance/exit gate the IR sensor will send the digital signal to the mini computer which in turn will turn on the camera through which license plate detection and recognition is done and this result will be displayed in the website with their unique parking slot number. The user can interact with the webpage by scanning the QR codes which are available at the parking area.
, Claims:1. The system claims to Display the status of the parking area on the display screen at the entry of the parking space.
3. The system claims to Records the entry of the vehicle by detecting the license plate number.
4. The system claims to provide login into the parking management system to the driver and a parking slot is allocated to the vehicle.
5. The vehicle is charged based on the parking time at the exit of the parking space.
6. The system claims to reallocate a new parking slot to the vehicle, If a vehicle is wrongly parked then the system allocates a
7. The system claims to charge the wrongly parked vehicle some penalty amount at the exit gate.