Automated parking key to developing AV trust, suppliers say

MUNICH — Two of the world's largest suppliers say automated valet parking could become a major tool in helping build trust among a public wary of autonomous driving technology.

Suppliers Robert Bosch GmbH and Continental AG, along with other suppliers such as Valeo, and automakers including BMW and Mercedes-Benz, in September participated in a joint driverless parking project at the Munich auto show. The project demonstrated how sensors in a parking garage can work with on-board sensors to automatically park the vehicle and later return it to its owner.

"I don't know how many people you've met who really like going into a parking garage," said Markus Heyn, a member of the board of management at Bosch. "It's typically not a thing where people would really like to go in there. You'd rather drop off the vehicle and somebody else take care of it, and when I come back, hopefully the car is brought back to me. That's the whole idea."

Garages equipped for self-parking, should they become more commonplace in the future, could become one of the first places the average person interacts with a fully automated driving system of some sort. And at a time when most consumers are skittish about self-driving vehicles, they could prove to be critical to building trust in advanced driving technology.

"People build trust in small doses," said Carla Bailo, CEO of the Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor, Mich. "If you look, for example, when [antilock braking systems] were introduced or when adaptive cruise control was introduced, quite frankly, nobody understood it. It took time for them to understand that with ABS you don't need to pump the brakes anymore."

Particularly for people in big cities, automated valet parking could be someone's first major interaction with an autonomous system, along with geofenced taxis or delivery services, said Frank Petznick, head of Continental's advanced driver-assistance systems. He said it would be "critical" for such functions to work well and to avoid major incidents.

"Whenever something happens with a semi- or fully automated car, it has a big echo in the news," he said. "Even situations where a human driver might also potentially struggle, the automatic car must not struggle. This is the expectation of this kind of technology. The cars must be significantly better than a human driver can be."

Bosch says it has developed the industry's first fully automated valet parking system, in which a customer can drop off their vehicle at a designated zone and have it returned to them later.

The vehicle, which would communicate with Bosch's smart infrastructure technology installed in the parking garage, would then drive itself to a parking spot and then back to a pickup spot when the driver wants the vehicle back.

Bosch says its garage infrastructure technology and the vehicle's self- driving tech would work together safely and immediately stop a vehicle were it to come in close range of an object or a person. It would also be able to guide vehicles to and from parking spaces autonomously even if the garage also contains manually driven vehicles.

The company is putting its technology to the test. Bosch last year partnered with Ford Motor Co. and commercial real estate company Bedrock to test automated valet parking at a garage in Detroit. The project utilized Bosch's intelligent parking infrastructure sensors and Ford's Co-Pilot360 driver-assist technologies.

The supplier last year also partnered with Mercedes-Benz and parking garage operator Apcoa to pilot automated valet parking at a garage at the Stuttgart, Germany, airport.

Bosch's Heyn said demonstrating to consumers, businesses and governments that its system works would help to build trust in it moving forward.

"We make sure that what's being detected by the stereo cameras is properly transmitted and executed in order to make the car stop, start and so on," he said.

Bailo stressed the importance of exposing people to automated technology, including automated parking, driverless delivery services and other, limited examples of autonomous driving.

"We've seen the technology and see where it does and doesn't work, and those 'doesn't-work' stories have been publicized quite a bit," she said. "Seeing [autonomous technology] in geofenced areas, doing this with delivery services — all of this will come before [moving] people. All of this will give people more confidence when they see that it works in delivering stuff. Maybe it'll work in delivering me."