Volvo: Driver could hop out, let car park itself

James R. Healey | USA TODAY

Show Caption Hide Caption Volvo Auto Park Volvo is working on a system that would let the driver hop out and walk away while the car finds a spot and parks itself.

Prototype finds empty spot%2C parks itself without anyone in the car

Volvo says some of the technology will be in next XC90 coming late next year

Goes well beyond today%27s automatic systems

The next step in autonomous motoring is self-parking cars: You can hop out, walk off and let the car find a spot and park itself.

Volvo is demonstrating such a system. The automaker says it's not headed for showrooms immediately, but neither is autonomous parking far-fetched.

"Autonomous parking is a concept technology that relieves the driver of the time-consuming task of finding a vacant parking space. The driver just drops the vehicle off at the entrance to the car park and picks it up in the same place later," says Thomas Broberg, a senior safety advisor at Volvo Car Group.

Volvo's concept goes beyond fledgling steps being taken toward self-driving cars, which pilot themselves while their drivers do other things. Google is most advanced, using cameras and sensors to follow a route without hitting anything, and even demonstrated it using a blind person in the driver's seat.

Story: Government wants go-slow on self-driving cars

And Volvo's system would do more than the cars on the road now that have equipment to help find, and park in, parallel parking spots a driver might not try. In those cars, drivers must activate the systems and stay in the cars until the parking is done, sometimes using the brakes to prevent hitting another parked car.

Volvo's talking about something much more sophisticated.

It won't work just anywhere, though.

The parking place needs "Vehicle 2 Infrastructure technology," Broberg says. That is, transmitters in the road.

They can tell if the parking structure is full or has some empty spots, and let the driver know.

"The driver uses a mobile phone application to activate the Autonomous parking and then walks away from the car. The vehicle uses sensors to localize and navigate to a free parking space. The procedure is reversed when the driver comes back to pick up the car," Broberg says.

The technology is "still being developed. However, we will take the first steps...by introducing the first features with autonomous steering in the" next-generation XC90, to be unveiled late next year, Broberg says.