Here at ACC UK Ltd Independent Volvo & Toyota Servicing, Repair & MOT Specialists of Farnborough, Hampshire we like to keep you abrest of the latest technologies and trials that Volvo are doing to the cars of the future. As Volvo trials wireless charging the carmaker is also making great progress on another innovative project; an autonomous parking solution.
Set to demonstrate its new technology next week, the Swedish firm's Vehicle 2 Infrastructure technology allows a driver to drop the vehicle off at the entrance to a car park, then use a mobile phone app to activate the car's self-parking , allowing the driver to just walk away.
Using sensors to localise and navigate itself into a free parking space, the Autonomous Parking vehicle is able to detect any obstacles in the way, such as people, and activate the brakes to avoid collisions. The parking procedure is then reversed when the driver comes back to pick up the car.
Self-parking app
The Vehicle 2 Infrastructure technology uses transmitters in the road surface, to inform the driver via the app, as to the availability of the nearest self-parking service-enabled parking lot.
"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," Broberg adds.
Volvo says its aims to take a lead in the field of autonomous driving, as it has already demonstrated through its SATRE road train project, in which a lead vehicle was followed by a train of autonomously driven cars at speeds of up to 55mph.
"The autonomous parking and platooning technologies are still being developed. However, we will take the first steps towards our leadership aim by introducing the first features with autonomous steering in the all-new Volvo XC90, which will be revealed at the end of 2014," concludes Thomas Broberg.
Autonomous driving technology could help motorists make more of available road capacity, reduce road congestion, improve safety and improve fuel economy of their vehicles.
What do you think? Would you trust an App to park your car? Do you hate having to navigate into tricky and small parking spaces? Would this be a feature that you would like to see on Volvo's in the future? Would this feature encourage you to purchase a Volvo?
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