Park Your Car By Using An App?

French Auto Parts Maker Valeo is working on a cure for the parking blues. They are developing an app that will allow drivers to let their vehicles park themselves. The aim is to allow motorists to set their vehicle to self-park and be able to walk away while the app does all the parking work.

The parking isn’t achieved by the app alone. In order to park using the app, a vehicle must be equipped with twelve ultra-sonic sound wave sensors, 360 degree scanners and a laser sensor. Valeo showed the world this process on September 7^th at the same Intelligent Vehicle Conference where Mary Barra talked about V2V technology.  The French company demonstrated the ability of a sensor-equipped land rover to back into a parking space.

This technology is supposed to make life ultra easy for consumers. Another video put out by Valeo shows a jogger get out of her vehicle, perform a simple swipe in the shape of a checkmark, and take off on a run while her SUV parks itself. One Valeo Executive thinks that their system will park cars better than a person normally can.

The Valeo Project Manager for Advanced Driver Assistance Systems, Amine Taleb said, “The car is able to do a much better parking maneuver than we as humans.”

An Associated Press Report explained the system in this manner: “Drivers approach their destination and the system finds a deck with an open space. The driver goes to the deck and activates the system. The deck then tells the car where the open space is. The sensors, cameras and laser activate, letting the car drive itself about 3 miles per hour, winding its way to the space and backing in. The system can even find a space on its own without a signal from a deck.” This is in contrast to other self-parking systems, which require the driver to locate the space and set the vehicle up to make a maneuver.

Valeo claims that the system will prevent the vehicle from hitting anything and will brake or take action to prevent a slow-speed parking collision. The app also allows the driver to watch a simulated aerial view of the parking underway via their smartphone. Valeo has legislative and consumer acceptance hurdles to get over before this type of technology has the chance to become the norm for drivers worldwide.