Shawn presents: Automated Valet Parking

Shawn doing his moves in front of the testing vehicle.

The mere thought of a quick drive into the city to go shopping makes a lot of people nervous: all that double parking, all those traffic fines, and all those dents and scratches in parking garages… But it’s all a thing of the past now, thanks to Automated Valet Parking from Bosch. So – we can take it easy. Shawn shows us how it’ll work in the future.

Automated Valet Parking turns parking garages into feelgood locations

We sent our IoT hero Shawn to a parking garage — and not just any old parking garage, but the one at the Mercedes-Benz Museum in Stuttgart. It’s the world’s first location with Automated Valet Parking. Here, Shawn experiences the parking of tomorrow: he stops in the drop-off area, taps ‘parking’’ on his app, and the automated parking function guides the car all the way to its space — without any driver. Less stress and more time for the good things in life — # LikeABosch.

Bosch and Daimler have not only created a completely new interface between infrastructure and vehicle but also perfectly matched the sensors and the on-board technology. Bosch provides the smart infrastructure and the communication unit inside the vehicle required for this purpose, while the technically equipped vehicles come from Daimler. And best of all: Virtually any modern car with ESP, communication unit, automatic transmission, start/stop function, electric parking brake and assisted steering is suitable for Automated Valet Parking.

Automated Valet Parking is comfortable and efficient — it’s the future

There’s one thing Shawn doesn’t know yet. In the future, depending on the environment and infrastructure, Automated Valet Parking won’t just save us those dark and gloomy car park scenarios and spare us all those annoying searches for parking spaces, it’ll also mean that our vehicles will drive into carwashes all by themselves or have their summer tires fitted.

And, although we’re don’t really like to admit it: since Automated Valet Parking navigates better than we humans do, parking errors, scratches, dents and accidents are all a thing of the past. This is thanks to an IoT-based camera system in the parking garage that finds suitable spaces matching the size of the car, monitors the area around the car, and detects any unexpected obstacles or people in the way, so that the vehicle can react immediately. With Automated Valet Parking, Bosch is setting a milestone for the future of autonomous driving.