No more cornering through the parking garage and looking for a free space: Mercedes-Benz wants to make everyday life easier with an autonomous system. The Federal Motor Transport Authority gives the green light for the technology that enables vehicles to park without a driver.
The Federal Motor Transport Authority (KBA) has issued the first permit for a driverless parking vehicle. The manufacturer Mercedes-Benz received the permit, as the authority in Flensburg announced. It is about an autonomous parking system (Automated Valet Parking – AVP) with which a car can be parked in a parking garage – without a driver.
“With this system, we are achieving another building block on the way to autonomous driving,” explained the KBA. The authority is at the same time the driver of the development and the guardian of the associated high security requirements for the systems.
According to the KBA, the basis for the autonomous driving function that can be activated later is the legal basis defined by the Federal Ministry of Transport in the national law on autonomous driving (StVG) and the associated ordinance (AFGBV). Based on this, a technical catalog of requirements was created and thus both safety and technical requirements for autonomous parking systems were defined.
The approved parking system is an autonomous driving mode in which the driver parks the car at a specific transfer point in a suitable parking garage and drives it from an AVP infrastructure located in the parking garage to a previously reserved parking space. After the vehicle has been handed over to the AVP infrastructure, there should be no further checks by the driver. With such a system, there is no need to search for a parking space.
