Bosch, Mercedes-Benz, and parking garage operator Apcoa plan to introduce driverless and highly automated parking at Stuttgart airport.

Daimler’s redesigned Mercedes-Benz S-Class is the claimed world’s first production vehicle to feature the technology required for future infrastructure-based automatic valet parking (AVP).

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Optional pre-installation of Intelligent Park Pilot makes the car capable of receiving a smartphone command to drive itself to a reserved parking space.

The P6 parking garage at Stuttgart airport will serve as the pilot for the planned commercial automated parking service. Here, the companies will test how the vehicle technology interacts with the intelligent Bosch infrastructure and Apcoa Flow, the digital platform provided by the garage operator.

This platform makes the whole parking process ticketless and cashless.

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In July 2019, Bosch and Mercedes-Benz received the world’s first special permit to operate AVP for selected E-Class vehicles without a safety driver in real-life, mixed parking garage traffic at the Mercedes-Benz Museum in Stuttgart.

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Use of S-Class AVP is conditional on the future availability of parking garages with the appropriate infrastructure, as well as on national legislators giving AVP the green light.

Daimler claims the S-Class is the world’s first vehicle to feature pre-installation of an SAE Level 4 automated driving function, the second-highest level of automation.

A drop-off and pick-up area will be set up directly behind the entrance to the P6 parking garage for AVP users.

The vehicle will park itself in the basement, guided by information from the infrastructure technology.

For the test phase about to start, P6 will initially have two spaces available for self-parking vehicles. More spaces will be added when driverless parking becomes standard as planned in the future, and as demand increases.

The pilot at Stuttgart will also be a premiere for new Bosch video cameras that can identify vacant parking spaces, monitor the driving aisle and its surroundings, and detect obstacles or people in the aisle. Until now, lidar sensors have been used for this purpose. A dedicated control centre in the parking garage then calculates the route the vehicles need to take to reach an available space.

Driverless parking is especially suitable for narrow, remote, and unattractive parking areas that people would otherwise avoid.