Volvo Reveals Self Parking Car
The internet is abuzz with Volvo’s newest You Tube video of an autonomous self-parking car. The website Motorauthority is even going so far as say this feature will be offered on the upcoming 2015 XC90.
The system, by the way, is not truly autonomous in the sense that your car will wander around seeking a spot until it finds one. It will, rather, work with specific parking garages set up with an interface that will guide the car to open parking places. An in-car system will notify the driver if the service is available and if there is an available space. Sensors in the car will allow the vehicle to interact with other non-autonomous cars and people.
Naturally this whole thing adds further fuel to the fire of autonomous cars and the regulatory implications of a vehicle operating without a licensed driver behind the wheel. In this author’s opinion, Volvo is clearly pushing the envelope if they plan on including this feature on a vehicle in the next few years. Likely this system will first see operation in large parking facilities located on private property to avoid the various legal issues that are sure to crop up. Still, the future must start somewhere and, as I have said before, I welcome the better, brighter future our new robot masters are set to deliver.
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Forget the parking-give me the auto drive for the interstate. This technology could make those long slow slogs across the midwest a little more endurable.
I thought Volvo was a smallish manufacturer with an appropriately small R&D budget. How does this kind of work get funded? For that matter, who decides that a feature like this should be a priority? Is it Geely making the Swedes work overtime to produce some Know How competitive advantage for the new owner? My current '09 V50 is the last Volvo I'll own.
Hasn't Ford been selling something like this, without the parking garage interface? Isn't there an app for that? Handy in some parts of some cities, I guess. A cure for urban parking anxiety attacks, for sure.
Things like this bother me, because instead of "being a better driver" as motivation, people can just "buy a more complicated car." Also - what Volvo really needs to invent is the self-purchasing car, cause they've been falling since about 2006 (interestingly, about the time they SHOULD HAVE redesigned the XC90.)