It’s all very well talking about self driving cars, but would you let your car park itself as well? This is a question you might need to seriously ask yourself before too long…
At the CES gadget event in Las Vegas, there are plenty of spiffing new gizmos and fancy things on display. One that especially caught my eye was the car which was able to park itself. This was put on display by a firm called Valeo and was pretty exciting stuff. Well, as exciting as a car being parked can be really. Which is not much at all, if we are being honest.
But to make this feat possible the company put cameras, sensors and a laser scanner in the car. All you need to do is stop somewhere, get out and go about your business. Just forget about the car. It can look after itself from this point on.
It Goes and Looks for a Space
The video below shows what happens next. While you are tearing round the aisles of your local supermarket looking for special offers on strawberry yoghurts which are almost but not quite rancid the vehicle goes and looks for a parking spot. Wait, it does what? I said: it looks for a flipping parking spot on its own, while you are elbowing grannies out of the way in order to get a supermarket bargain.
So what happens next? You’ve got the yoghurts and now you need the car, but you don’t even know where it is. Easy. You just use a smartphone app to tell it to come and pick you up. You simply stroll out of the supermarket as cool as Steve McQueen, and hop into the car before driving home. The makers say that it could park itself more quickly in a parking lot fitted with special sensors.
Would you trust your car to park itself?