BMW to showcase autonomous parking technology

BMW might showcase a new technology that it plans to introduce at the 2015 Consumer Electronics Show called Remote Valet Parking Assistant. You have to prepare yourself for what you read next: A BMW car powered by this technology can find its way through a parking lot on its own and drive back to the owner all by itself.

While it seems like a plot from a James Bond movie, but indeed you can feel like Bond if this technology is used in the BMW cars of the future. This technology co-developed with technology giant Continental, will work with a smart watch application that detects voice commands of the owner and can direct the car accordingly. The demonstration will be given in a modified i3, that gets four laser scanners placed at specific angles to regularly examine the surroundings. These laser scanners in turn trigger an operating system to control the basic driving functions like accelerating, braking and steering.

According to BMW, the driver just needs to activate the system once the owner steps out of the car. Thereafter the car will find a vacant space around the parking lot and park itself. Well, incase if there is someone who just parked his car and is making his way to the lift fear not the system can detect pedestrians and badly parked cars also.

There is no specific date when this new technology will make it to production, however the company is looking to use the laser scanning technology to provide automatic braking upon detection of hazards.

If this technology does make it to all BMW cars in that case then valets around the world might want to look at an alternate career as even other manufacturers might want to adopt it. However, it isn’t as easy as it seems and we aren’t sure if BMW can sell enough of this system to do justice to this new technology. Instead they might put the laser technology to good use and who knows one of the future BMW cars might boast of this technology for braking if not parking.

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