Abstract: A method for operating a parking assistance system for a vehicle involves a) receiving an optical image of an environment of the vehicle and a digital environment map representing the environment of the vehicle, the digital environment map including at least one designated parking area, b) selecting, for each designated parking area, a region of interest in the received optical image corresponding to the respective designated parking area, c) detecting, in each selected region of interest, lines and/or symbols provided on the ground, d) assigning one of many parking slot classes to each selected region of interest based on the detected lines and/or symbols, and e) determining, for each designated parking area, if the respective designated parking area corresponding to the selected region of interest is a potential parking slot based on the parking slot class assigned to the corresponding region of interest.

Abstract: A method for supporting automated metadata augmentation in a hierarchical level architecture for machine-to-machine (M2M) cloud computing, wherein metadata is employed to provide descriptive information about entities, wherein said entities are generated at a lower level of said architecture, in particular at the bottom level of said architecture, wherein said entities are propagated from said lower level, in particular via one or more levels, upwards to an upper level of said architecture, in particular to the application level of said architecture, and wherein metadata is added to said entities on one or more of the levels of said architecture, is characterized in that feedback information based on one or more of said entities is generated at said upper level of said architecture, and wherein said feedback information is propagated downwards in said architecture. Furthermore, a corresponding system is disclosed.