Volvo demonstrates its ingenious self-parking car

Volvo Car Group has developed what it claims is an ingenious concept for autonomous parking. The concept car finds and parks in a vacant space by itself, without the driver inside. The smart, driverless car also interacts safely and smoothly with other cars and pedestrians in the car park. Vehicle 2 Infrastructure technology informs the driver when the service is available. The driver uses a mobile phone application to activate the autonomous parking system and then leaves the car. The vehicle uses sensors
June 21, 2013 Read time: 2 mins

609 Volvo Car Group has developed what it claims is an ingenious concept for autonomous parking. The concept car finds and parks in a vacant space by itself, without the driver inside. The smart, driverless car also interacts safely and smoothly with other cars and pedestrians in the car park.

Vehicle 2 Infrastructure technology informs the driver when the service is available. The driver uses a mobile phone application to activate the autonomous parking system and then leaves the car.  The vehicle uses sensors to locate and navigate to a free parking space. The procedure is reversed when the driver comes back to pick up the car.

Volvo says that combining autonomous driving with detection and auto brake for other objects makes it possible for the car to interact safely with other cars and pedestrians in the car park. Speed and braking are adapted for smooth integration in the parking environment.

"Autonomous parking is a concept technology that relieves the driver of the time-consuming task of finding a vacant parking space. The driver just drops the vehicle off at the entrance to the car park and picks it up in the same place later," says Thomas Broberg, senior safety advisor Volvo Car Group. "Our approach is based on the principle that autonomously driven cars must be able to move safely in environments with non-autonomous vehicles and unprotected road users."

Networking & Communication Systems Location Based Systems

For more information on companies in this article

Related Content

  • Flexible, demand-based parking charges ease parking problems
    April 10, 2012
    Innovative parking initiatives on the US Pacific Coast. David Crawford reviews. Californian cities are leading the way in trialling new solutions to their endemic parking problems. According to Donald Shoup, a professor of urban planning at the University of California in Los Angeles, drivers looking for available spots can cause up to 74% of traffic congestion in downtown areas. One solution is variable, demand-responsive pricing of parking.
    Read More
  • US IntelliDrive cooperative infrastructure programme
    February 2, 2012
    The 'rebranding' of the US's Vehicle-Infrastructure Integration programme as IntelliDrive marks an effort to make the whole undertaking more accessible both in terms of nomenclature and technology. Shelley Row, director of the ITS Joint Program Office within USDOT's Research and Innovative Technology Administration, talks about the changes
    Read More
  • ITS benefits escape public
    June 8, 2015
    John Kendall considers the public’s awareness of the benefits of ITS. While the results of developing ITS technology may be clear to readers of ITS International, there is far less evidence that drivers have any appreciation of what the technology is doing for them. So how aware are drivers of the developments that are designed to make their journeys less congested and safer?
    Read More
  • Cooperative infrastructure - the future for tolling?
    February 2, 2012
    Leading European tolling solution providers give a snapshot of how they think tolling's technological future will look
    Read More

Highlighted Content