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

For more information on companies in this article

Related Content

  • Cost Benefit: the economic case for cycling
    August 20, 2019
    Cycling is good for us for any number of reasons. David Crawford finds that it is now possible to access basic, low-cost data which will help make the economic case for improving infrastructure Cycling is enjoying a favourable press the world over as a ‘good thing’ in the economic, environmental and social spheres. A recent study on the Value of Cycling from the UK’s University of Birmingham, for example, shows that cycle-friendly urban settings can deliver annualised transport infrastructural support co
    Read More
  • Indra leads European autonomous driving project
    November 17, 2016
    Spain-based consulting and technology company Indra is leading a project that will test autonomous driving on European roads, mainly in the metropolitan areas of Lisbon, Madrid and Paris. These are the three largest cities in the Atlantic Core Network Corridor, which comprises roads that are regarded as priorities for developing Europe's transport infrastructure. Spain's Traffic Department, the Polytechnic University of Madrid, Portugal's National Road Safety Authority, the University of Coimbra, the Ped
    Read More
  • Cubic: predictive analytics is putting fortune tellers out of business
    November 23, 2018
    The rise of machine learning and artificial intelligence means that fortune tellers will soon be out of business. Ed Chavis takes a behind the scenes look at the world of predictive analytics ver since organisations started taking advantage of insights derived from Big Data, data scientists concentrated their efforts on the ability to make correct assumptions about the future. A few years later, with the help of automation, developments in machine learning (ML) and advancements in the application of a
    Read More
  • UK to lead the way in testing driverless cars
    July 20, 2015
    The UK government has launched a US$30 million competitive fund for collaborative research and development into driverless vehicles, along with a code of practice for testing. The measures, announced by Business Secretary Sajid Javid and Transport Minister Andrew Jones, will put the UK at the forefront of the intelligent mobility market, expected to be worth US£1.4 trillion by 2025. The government wants bidders to put forward proposals in areas such as safety, reliability, how vehicles can communicat
    Read More

Highlighted Content