Unless you have been living under a rock, you must be aware that Artificial Intelligence is slowly taking over this world. A lot of things we do manually will all be automated in the coming few years, including driving. Now, that’s not good news for people like me who love driving. However, there is one aspect about cars that I really won’t mind getting fully-automated – parking at malls and other public places. I find the whole process exceptionally irritation, especially when you come across fools who wrongly park their cars. But soon in the future, valet parking will be fully automated with no human assistance, as demonstrated by Daimler and Bosch through their latest innovation. After three years of development and testing, Daimler AG and Robert Bosch GmbH have been given the approval from German regulators to run their automated driverless parking system at the Mercedes-Benz Museum in Stuttgart, Germany.
“This decision by the authorities shows that innovations like automated valet parking are possible in Germany first,” Bosch board member Dr. Markus Heyn said. “Driverless driving and parking are important building blocks for tomorrow’s mobility. The automated parking system shows just how far we have already progressed along this development path.”
The full-automated driverless valet parking system is the first of its kind in the world. For it to work, the vehicles have to be equipped with Level 4 autonomous driving system, which according to Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) means the vehicle can handle all aspects of driving in certain conditions without human intervention. Sensors developed by Bosch are strategically located around the garage and they work with the car’s systems to guide it to the right spot. The car owner just has to use a dedicated smartphone app to initiate the system and get off the car. Everything else is taken care by the driverless valet parking system. To retrieve the car, it’s the same process in reverse, where the car drives itself back to the drop-off point. Now that the system has entered into real world use, we won’t be surprised if it makes its way to other parts of the world soon.
[Via:Forbes]
