Continental has introduced hands-free parking to its autonomous driving platform.
The technology, developed by Israeli-based Imagery, enables the vehicle to explore a parking lot, identify a parking space, and then park the vehicle without the driver touching the steering wheel. It uses motion planning, a deep neural network that learns to drive by imitating human behaviour, meaning it can make data-driven decisions based on its surroundings and therefore navigate new environments.
However, the driver must still be in the vehicle and decide when to engage the autonomous valet parking feature.
Amiss Toyed, Head of Partnerships and Innovation at Continental Business Area Autonomous Mobility, said, “Imagery’s technology approach is a great add-on to Continental’s software stack solutions for assisted and automated driving. We are impressed by the talented and highly motivated Imagery team and we are looking forward to jointly realize new automated parking features.”
Errand Fir, CEO at Imagery, said, “Autonomous parking is just the first step in the path to full autonomous driving. The capabilities of our mapless system extend easily to the open road, enabling the vehicle to operate freely in geographic areas which were previously unknown to it.”
