Sometime soon, your car will park itself in urban garages

DETROIT (AP) — So after the coronavirus threat has passed, you head downtown for a baseball game.

You get to the parking garage, and using an app on your phone, you link your SUV to the garage’s computers and sensors, and the SUV finds a spot on the fourth floor and parks itself while you catch batting practice.

This isn’t some far-off technology anymore. German auto parts maker Bosch is testing it with Mercedes in Stuttgart. And this week it announced a collaboration with Ford at a garage near downtown Detroit.

Although the backers won’t say when the technology could be in widespread use, they say it’s one benefit from autonomous-car research that is coming sooner rather than later.

“The goal is as soon as practically possible to deliver a safe experience,” says Kevin Bopp, vice president of parking and mobility for Bedrock, the real estate arm of Detroit-based mortgage giant Quicken Loans.

Bedrock owns the parking garage just west of downtown where Ford and Bosch are testing a system using modified Ford Escape small SUVs and about 20 floor-mounted laser sensors.

Bopp sees the technology moving from the test to a residential building where selected tenants would be able to summon vehicles for personal use with the custom parking feature. Data would be gathered and problems worked out, and from there, the systems would spread to other smart garages with sensors and computers.

Source: scnow.com