The Techno Quickie: The self-parking car

By Daniel Calbacho

Autonomy- don’t we all wish we had some of that?  Teenagers would kill to do as they please and roll to their own beat. So who would ever imagine an autonomous car? Volvo is in development of just that. A car that drives better than us! It’s safer, more fuel efficient and leaves us with more time to do other things than get our nickers in a knot with traffic issues.

A slice of the technology being developed is the self-parking car. Volvo is the world’s first car maker to develop a system that can analyse its surroundings and make judgement calls regarding other cars and pedestrians. Volvo indicates that the system will be launched sooner than we think!

Its goes something like this:

You install an app to your smart phone which is linked to your Volvo.

1. You drive the Volvo to a designated drop-off and pick-up zone in a parking lot
2. You press the auto-park button on your phone
3. The car will automatically drive off once you close the door and start navigating its way through the parking lot in search for an empty parking bay
4. Once it finds a bay, it will park the car in the bay and send a notification to your phone
5. When you need the vehicle you simply open the app and press the collect button. A message is sent to the vehicle and it will navigate safely through the parking lot to find its way to the pick-up zone for you take over

And who said chauffeurs were dying breed!