Autonomous driving has gone off the boil a bit in the automotive industry, but Mercedes-Benz and Bosch have made a brave step forward: Germany's transport authority (KBA) has approved the use of Level 4 autonomous driving technology at a Stuttgart Airport parking garage (Apoca P6 if you're passing through).
It's a world first and means visitors can simply drop their vehicle at the valet station, leaving it to drive off autonomously to an assigned parking space. Later, it returns to the pick-up point in exactly the same way.
The process relies on the interplay between intelligent infrastructure supplied by Bosch for the garage, and Mercedes-Benz in-car technology.
Bosch sensors in the parking garage monitor the driving corridor and its surroundings and provide the information needed to guide the vehicle. The technology in the vehicle converts the information it receives from the infrastructure into driving manoeuvres. This way, vehicles can even drive themselves up and down ramps to move between stories in the parking garage. If the infrastructure sensors detect an obstacle, the vehicle brakes and safely comes to a complete stop. Only once the route is clear does it continue on its way.
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There is one catch. The technology only works with select Mercedes-Benz S-Class or EQS models built from mid-2021, which have the Intelligent Park Pilot feature built in.
“Driverless parking is a key aspect of automated mobility," says Dr Markus Heyn, member of the Bosch board of management and chairman of the Mobility Solutions business sector.
"It will be with driverless parking that everyday automated driving will start. From the outset, Bosch has taken the approach of making the infrastructure in parking garages intelligent... In the future, our aim is to equip more and more parking garages with the necessary infrastructure technology – we plan to do several hundred of them worldwide in the next few years.”
The two companies have held a licence to operate automated parking at the airport since 2019, but this is the first time the technology has been approved for commercial use with privately owned vehicles. Customers can book and pay for the service online, using the "Mercedes me" app connected to their car.
After all the passengers have exited the vehicle, the app starts the parking process. The system checks whether the route to the booked parking space is clear, and that all the other technical requirements have been satisfied. If this is the case, drivers receive a notification in the app confirming that the intelligent infrastructure has taken control of the vehicle. They can then leave the parking garage.
The vehicle starts automatically and finds its own way to its parking space. When the driver wants to retrieve their car from the parking garage, they can summon it via smartphone command. Their vehicle then makes its own way to a predetermined pick-up area.