Enhanced park assist systems are now being developed to enable the vehicle to park itself without requiring the driver to be present in the cabin. First deployments of remote park assist aim to park the vehicle where there is insufficient room for the driver to open the door. Future deployments will add further autonomy to enable the vehicle to park itself without requiring driver supervision. The latter comes after the recent announcement of the collaboration between park assist vendor Valeo and parking infrastructure vendor Cisco.
With the arrival of autonomous driving applications, such as highway cruise control, developments of new advanced park assist systems will realize further benefits from autonomy. They include:
- The parking of larger, modern vehicles in small, unchanged parking spaces and thus enhances driver confidence and lowers insurance cost;
- The vehicle to drive itself to an available parking space and thus enhances convenience to the driver and reduces fuel consumption, harmful emissions and traffic congestion; and
- To enable more vehicles to be parked in the same area and thus raises efficiency in parking operations and maximizes revenue for operators.
As well as higher cost, there are many challenges facing these new automotive applications. They include the positioning of the enabled vehicle within the parking facility and the possibility that other vehicles can park in the designated space, from which enabled vehicles could endlessly search for other spaces. Kevin Mak, Senior Analyst at the Automotive Practice of Strategy Analytics, said, “This shows how important the recent collaboration with a parking infrastructure vendor is, if autonomous park assist systems are to be commercialized.”
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