Car manufacturer Mercedes-Benz and engineering company Bosch have announced that their automated parking system has been approved for use by Germany’s Federal Motor Transport Authority (KBA).
Specifically, the KBA has said the two companies can use the automated technology in the P6 parking garage run by APCOA at Stuttgart Airport.
According to the pair, this makes it the world’s first highly-automated driverless parking function to be approved for commercial use, as it operates at SAE Level 4.
Mercedes claims automated parking represents a key part of the future of driverless mobility.
This announcement follows the market launch of Mercedes-Benz’s Drive Pilot Level 3 system, with its Level 4 system for parking with its Intelligent Park Pilot set to be ready by the end of 2023.
“The world’s first approval for customer use of our highly automated and driverless parking function, developed together with our technology partner Bosch, shows that innovation leadership and ‘Made in Germany’ go hand in hand,” said Markus Schäfer, member of the board of management of Mercedes-Benz Group AG and chief technology officer at Mercedes-Benz.
“We really are showing our customers how technology can make life easier and give back precious time.”
On the role of driverless parking in automated mobility, Dr. Markus Heyn, management board member and chairman of the mobility solutions business sector at Bosch, said: “The highly automated parking system we developed together with our partner Mercedes-Benz shows just how far we’ve already progressed along this development path.
‘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.”
To use the driverless valet, drivers needs to enter the parking garage, exit their vehicle and send it to a pre-booked space through an app.
According to Mercedes-Benz, the vehicle then drives itself to its assigned space and parks and, later, the vehicle returns to the pick-up point in exactly the same way.
To successfully do this relies on a combination of smart infrastructure from Bosch and Mercedes-Benz’s automotive technology. Bosch provided sensors to monitor the driving corridor and provide data to guide the vehicles.
The vehicle system turns this information into driving behaviours, such as driving up and down ramps. If the sensors detect an obstacle, the system is designed so that the vehicle will safely stop and wait for a clear route before continuing.
In 2019, Mercedes-Benz and Bosch obtained the world’s first special permit to operate an automated valet service without human oversight in the parking garage of the Mercedes-Benz Museum in Stuttgart.
