The Volkswagen Group is testing autonomous parking at the Hamburg Airport with Audi, Porsche and Volkswagen models. These cars are fitted with autonomous driving technology and based on a map of the car-park at the Hamburg airport, the cars are driving to pre-determined parking spaces on their own. Volkswagen believes that autonomous parking is a very important component of autonomous driving and believes that this technology can be available in the first set of VW Group cars by as early as 2020, barely two years from now. Of course, safety being the top priority, the autonomous parking function will be introduced in the cars in stages.
Johann Jungwirth, Chief Digital Officer of the Volkswagen Group, says: "Autonomous parking can make an important contribution to creating convenient, stress-free mobility for our customers. We therefore want to democratise the technology and make it accessible to as many people as possible."
The autonomous parking function is currently being publicly demonstrated at the Hamburg airport and VW says that the research and technology behind it is in an advanced stage of development. These vehicles are fitted with active surrounding recognition system. This includes technologies such as ultra-sound, radar and cameras of course. The data gathered from these systems is processed in a central control unit on the cars itself. These systems will help the car to recognise objects and react as the data input.
The project which is called 'Mobility of Tomorrow' is collaboration between Volkswagen Group, the Hamburg city and the Hamburg international airport. Currently, the Volkswagen group is using cars from Audi, Porsche and Volkswagen for this trial and of course, all three car brands are pooling their resources and scientific data on the same.
