  The problem of path planning for automated parking is usually presented as
finding a collision-free path from initial to goal positions, where three out
of four parking slot edges represent obstacles. We rethink the path planning
problem for parallel parking by decomposing it into two independent parts. The
topic of this paper is finding optimal parking slot entry positions. Path
planning from initial to entry position is out of scope here. We show the
relation between entry positions, parking slot dimensions, and the number of
backward-forward direction changes. This information can be used as an input to
optimize other parts of the automated parking process.

Robotics