Valeo and Cisco recently announced a cooperation agreement for strategic innovation in smart mobility services at the Viva Technology conference in Paris. Their proposed product is Valeo Park4U, a connected platform and app that enables cars to park by themselves in connected car parks.
See also: How do you make parking smarter?
Here’s how it works — the driver gets out of his or her vehicle at the parking lot entrance and activates the automatic parking system using a smartphone. The vehicle then continues its journey in automatic mode until it has finished parking. With just a few clicks, it can be set in motion again to meet the driver at the designated pick-up point in the parking lot.
The vehicle drives itself inside the parking lot by combining the power of automatic parking technologies — Valeo onboard telematics and secure key systems (Valeo InBlue) and Cisco Parking Controller technologies, which equip car parks with Wi-Fi, video sensors, and artificial intelligence-based solutions.
Knowing its environment
The vehicle’s sensors, along with the information provided by the equipment installed in the car park, allow the vehicle to perceive its environment with an extremely high level of accuracy and anticipate and calculate its journey at any time up to the completion of the parking maneuver. The vehicle is able to navigate complex parking facilities in total safety, even multi-story garages, by processing all of the necessary information with the help of an integrated GPS service and the vehicle’s own sensors.
The ability of more recent cars to self-park is not new per se. More significant is the ability of the cars to drop off and pick up the owner at the entrance to the parking garage, with the car effectively acting as a driverless valet. The service is currently being introduced at a connected car park in Issy-les-Moulineaux, France, owned by urban mobility company Indigo. With their parking network of over 750 cities and 16 countries, any future roll-out could be substantial.
Robert Vassoyan, Chief Executive Officer of Cisco France, said:
“With the innovative Cyber Valet Services project, we can currently connect millions of parking spaces in total safety. We are pleased and proud to combine our expertise, technological solutions, and resources with those of Valeo to together provide cities and their residents with new digital services. Partnering with a major French company further illustrates our desire to work in collaboration with the entire ecosystem and our ability to co-innovate as we pursue our commitment to accelerating the digital transformation.”
