VTT’s robot car parks autonomously

VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland’s robot car Marilyn is parking autonomously - 100m away from its driver. The trial in Tampere uses the Internet of Things (IoT) and is expected to allow vehicles to park closer together without fear of collisions at airports and shopping centres. Johan Scholliers, project manager at VTT, says the technology will also help reduce congestion in parking areas.
June 25, 2018 Read time: 2 mins
814 VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland’s robot car Marilyn is parking autonomously - 100m away from its driver. The trial in Tampere uses the Internet of Things (IoT) and is expected to allow vehicles to park closer together without fear of collisions at airports and shopping centres.


Johan Scholliers, project manager at VTT, says the technology will also help reduce congestion in parking areas.

Marilyn utilises 7643 Here Technologies’ ultra-wideband (UWB)-based technology which allows it to be positioned indoors without satellite assistance. UWB is a radio technology that transmits data in short and low-power pulses over a wide frequency band.

The driver parks the car through an app that reserves a parking space. A parking guidance system confirms whether the space is free and detects potential problems using traffic cameras connected to an open IoT platform – which in turn transmits route information to the vehicle.

VTT’s trial is part of the Autopilot project’s investigation of the potential for IoT-automated driving. The initiative is funded by the European Commission and is also operational in Italy, the Netherlands, France, Spain and South Korea.

Parking & Access Control

Related Content

  • September 26, 2014
    Keeping a weather eye on road conditions
    Drive C2X has shown that advanced warning of poor road conditions could cut fatalities, as David Crawford explains. Connected vehicle (CV)-based warning technologies could mean 6% fewer deaths and 5% fewer injuries in road traffic accidents in Europe, according to the final results of the European Commission (EC) co-funded DRIVE C2X project. According to the European Centre for Information and Communication Technologies (EICT) which provided management support, these “prove that CV systems work and can hav
    Read More
  • May 18, 2017
    VTT's autonomous cars take to public roads
    The autonomous cars developed by VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland are able to exchange information with each other and their driving environment. They are able to follow a pre-programmed route and avoid collisions with sudden obstacles without input from the driver. The cars currently require the lane markings or sides of the road to be visible. However, by 2020, VTT says the cars will be driving in more demanding conditions on roads covered in gravel and snow. The autonomous cars feature a thermal
    Read More
  • October 29, 2020
    Finnish city sets up robotic vehicle trials 
    Test area will allow autonomous vehicles to be tested without human intervention
    Read More
  • February 9, 2018
    VTT solution develops compact devices
    VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland has developed a new manufacturing technology for the integration of very high-frequency terahertz systems to enable cost-effective development of telecommunications and imaging solutions and space instruments that are even smaller and have higher frequencies. It can be used in telecommunications applications, where radio links built in frequency bands of one hundred gigahertz enable wireless data transfer, and is also aimed at benefitting imaging solutions operating
    Read More

Highlighted Content