At a garage in Inglostadt, Germany, drivers can get out of the car, walk away, and let it drive to a parking space and park itself. Upon their return, the same drivers can press a button on a smartphone app and see their car move automatically towards the garage exit.
This car park is an experimental project led by Audi; equipped with numerous laser systems that map the environment in a three-dimensional model, to allow cars equipped with a special system of laser and wireless receivers to move freely, identifying a free parking space and even turning off the engine, saving drivers precious minutes in the daily commute.
It will likely take a decade for this technology to be perfected and implemented, but the project demonstrates how fully autonomous driving could one day become a reality. Vehicle autonomy is advancing at an impressive pace, but initially in tightly controlled environments such as the confined environment of a garage.
“Actually, it will still be a long time before a truly fully autonomous car appears,” explains Annie Lien, an engineer at the Electronics Research Lab, a facility shared with Audi, Volkswagen and other Volkswagen Group brands. in Belmont, California, near Silicon Valley. According to Lien and other industry experts, the problem is that the technology shown in several demonstrations held by automakers is absolutely not ready for dealerships. Hardware must become cheaper and more compact; systems must be simple and intuitive to use; safety and reliability must be guaranteed; several legal issues need to be resolved.
Both Audi and Toyota attended this year's Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas to showcase their advanced self-driving technology. Toyota has unveiled a Lexus equipped with similar equipment to self-driving cars by Google and showed videos of the car moving autonomously on a race course. Audi's demonstrations, meanwhile, were more focused on practical considerations, showing a compact laser sensor developed to fit into the body of a car and scan the road ahead, generating a three-dimensional image of its surroundings.
Audi also unveiled its self-parking system in Las Vegas, modifying the parking lot at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel. The system uses laser measuring equipment to send three-dimensional information to the car, which means fewer components installed directly on board. Lien says that before commercialization, the system will have to be standardized and installed in the most prestigious buildings and residential centres.
Audi also demonstrated two semi-automatic parking systems that could appear within the next five years. The first performs a perpendicular parking operation while the driver is still in the car; the second, on the other hand, allows the driver to park his car using a smartphone or tablet.
Moreover, all the major automakers are developing their own technologies for automated parking, even if "we don't yet have cars that can really drive themselves," says Bryant Walker-Smith, a professor at Stanford Law School who specializes in issues around the autonomous cars. Walker-Smith adds that the development of self-driving technologies will be heavily influenced by legal issues: "we don't know how the public will react in the event of an accident," concludes Walker-Smith, "nor do we know how judges and juries would apply existing laws."
