While we may not be seeing fully autonomous cars on the roads for many years to come, autonomous and driver assist technologies are being slowly introduced into the mainstream market. Emergency brake technology is steadily becoming a normal feature of modern vehicles and nearly one-third of new vehicles are equipped with a park assist function.
For Bosch, which is pushing forward with its own park assist technologies, this is seen as the first important steps on the road to fully automated vehicles, with drivers able to get used to relinquishing control of the car and important evidence is built up for suppliers and OEMs to prove the safety of the technologies.
As a supplier of technology and services to the automotive market, Bosch may not often shout about its work in this field. However, it is quietly working behind the scenes, and partnering with OEMs, to push forward its autonomous driving technology, in particular its parking assist innovations.
Carson Rommel, vice-president of ultrasonic products at Bosch, says: “Parking is important as everyone talks about it being the first step to autonomous cars. Lower speeds and in non-public spaces like garages makes the introduction easier. Fully automated parking will come long before fully automated cars.”
Introducing this technology is also welcomed by drivers as parking is often a source of major frustration, according to Bosch it is is also liable for 30% of inner city traffic caused by people looking for elusive spaces. Furthermore, data from car insurance company Allianz, 40% of damage to vehicles is generated during parking.
Taking the hassle out of parking
In a bid to rid drivers of the laborious task of searching for a parking space in large garages, Bosch has partnered with Daimler to test its automated valet parking technology. The technology not only means the car can autonomously find a parking space but also enables the vehicle to park itself. Without the need for people to get in and out of the vehicle in the parking space, it also means cars can be parked closer together; an attractive proposition for consumer drivers who own larger, modern vehicles.
Drivers can simply drop off their vehicle at the entrance to a parking garage. Then, using a smartphone app they instruct the car to find itself a place to park. Once ready to drive home, the driver just returns to the drop-off point and uses the app to call the car back.
The technology works using on-board vehicle sensors, which a lot of cars already have to sense obstacles when parking, a Bosch vehicle control unit, and a communication connectivity control unit, which connects the car with the parking garage infrastructure so that information between both can be exchanged for example whether there is a free parking space nearby.
Intelligent infrastructure is also needed in the car park, but this is kept simple and cheap with the use of sensors and radio communication units.
Bosch board of management member Dr. Dirk Hoheisel says they will have to work closely with owners of the infrastructure to ensure all parking data sent to cars is accurate. “You will need to ensure that maps of garages you have mirror the car park to a few cm and to do so we must verify the data we have from blueprints,” he adds.
Dr Rolf Nicodemus, project vice-president of connecting parking at Bosch, says that they are currently developing infrastructure, sensors and communication units in car parks and cars with Daimler and is confident we will see automated valet parking this decade.
Barriers to entry
There are still some small wrinkles in Bosch’s plans to bring automated valet parking to market, for example, how can an automated car go through barriers that are coin-operated? Bosch is confident, however, that these issues can be easily ironed out by working with the owners of the infrastructure. Plus, a lot of the technology to solve these issues, such as automated payment for toll booths, already exists.
Bosch hopes that live testing these kinds of technologies will also help answer safety and legal questions around autonomous driving and push forward legislation to let fully autonomous cars on the roads, driving at higher speeds.
Jürgen Auracher, senior project manager at Bosch, says: “Currently 6km/h is the top speed for valet parking but we hope that the law will change to allow testing at higher speeds as the technology is proven in these self-contained public spaces.”
“Parking, as a rule, is not in an open public space so it is easier to regulate,” adds Hoheisel. “Legislation on the technology must be solved generally and eventually written into international law but we are hopeful as some places in America and Germany are already permitting fully automated driving on roads. The politics is fairly open to this right now and I am confident we will see a general framework for autonomous driving by 2020.”
Tests of valet parking have already begun with a small Daimler car2go fleet and the technology looks set to reach the commercial market very soon. Nicodemus says: “It will be the bigger, higher value cars that we will start this technology with and we aim to reach the commercial market by 2018.”