By Alexander Stoklosa
Audi’s future-tech blast at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show included an automated self-parking feature, which might not sound impressive. After all, Ford Focuses can now park themselves with minimal driver input—but Audi’s system will be fully autonomous, allowing drivers to exit the car and instruct it to go find a parking space and park itself. We had the opportunity to watch a prototype version of this system fitted to an A7 do its thing in the parking garage of the Mandarin Oriental hotel in Las Vegas, and it was nothing short of astounding.
Look, ma, no hands! Or head or legs or body!
The self-parking functionality eventually will include the ability for the car to go find a parallel-parking spot, park in owners’ garages, or navigate WLAN-equipped parking garages of the future, but the version we previewed was the iteration that only functioned within a laser- and Wi-Fi–equipped garage. Of course, the Mandarin’s garage normally boasts neither of those two technologies, so Audi retrofitted portions of the structure. Laser trackers communicate with the A7 via Wi-Fi, helping the car to locate itself within the garage as it seeks out a parking space. Why not just use GPS? Audi points out that in many parking structures—especially those of the underground variety—a GPS signal is hard to rely on.
Besides utilizing the assistance of the laser trackers, the demonstrator A7 uses its stock ultrasonic parking sensors (the front-mounted radar sensors used for Audi’s adaptive cruise control system aren’t needed) to avoid hitting things and to locate open parking spaces. Audi was quick to point out that the A7 equipped with the prototype system was completely stock—there were no bulky, experimental-looking autonomous-vehicle doodads added to the car. The only thing unique to this particular A7 was software tuned to receive location info from the garage’s laser trackers and its onboard sensors to manipulate the throttle, brakes, steering, and the shifting of the automatic transmission (the A7 preferred backing into the open space it found) to motor along sans driver.
Speed-wise, the A7 didn’t move all that quickly; our best guess is that it topped out around 5–10 mph. When pressed for a theoretical top speed, a German Audi engineer on hand for the demo simply responded that the system could operate at as high a speed as they wished to program it to, although high speeds in a parking structure hardly are necessary. Audi reps also hinted that the prototype’s speeds were being kept low because, well, it’s a prototype—if the thing were to go AWOL, it’s probably better if it does so at a walking pace. Regardless, 5 mph seems plenty quick when you consider the empty driver’s seat—it’s somewhat difficult to prepare oneself to witness an ordinary-looking Audi cruise by with no one in it.
The parking-garage system centered around a (prototype) smartphone app, which was used to instruct the A7 to go seek a space and to call the car to leave the space and drive back to the phone operator’s location. The app also would display in real time where the car was in the garage, and which spaces were open. So why isn’t this feature on sale now, if it clearly works in prototype form? Several reasons—the first and most important of which is the minor detail that most if not all parking structures lack the communications infrastructure to support the system. (Audi is working to so equip a garage in Ingolstadt, Germany.) The second major reason is that more tuning likely is necessary in order to let the self-parking car handle other traffic or pedestrians within the garage; during our demonstration, Audi blocked off a portion of the structure so that the A7 made the trip from valet stand to parking space unimpeded. The automaker is giving itself a decade to bring the advanced self-parking system to market, so you have a little while to get ready for the future.
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Car & Driver
