Now, the idea has been developed from enabling a car to parallel park to one in which the car can not only navigate itself to a designated bay in a car park and then park, but also deliver itself to the driver.
How can all this be done? Bosch, Daimler and car2go – Daimler's car sharing subsidiary – are working on a project that combines an intelligent car park infrastructure, a vehicle control unit and intelligent sensors on cars.
Drivers can reserve a car2go vehicle using a smartphone app. Once the driver arrives at the car park, the app tells the car they are there and it drives up automatically. Similarly, once the car is returned to a drop zone, the car park's system will direct it to a parking space.
Interestingly, Dr Dirk Hoheisel – a member of Bosch's board with responsibility for automated technology – believes automated parking might be ready for mass deployment before full automated driving. The reason? Car parks are a more controlled environment; not only are speeds lower, but there will also be an infrastructure to supervise proceedings.
On a larger scale, it could end the obsession of cruising around a shopping centre's car park, looking for the space closest to the entrance. But it will take away that sense of satisfaction of just getting that space before another driver.
