BMW gives us a teaser of its self-parking technology
BMW gave the world its first taste of the company’s new ActiveAssist autonomous vehicle technology at the Consumer Electronics Show earlier this year. The taste came in the form of a 2-Series prototype that was capable of fully handling itself while driving at the limit. As impressive as that was, however, the German automaker wants to take things to the next level.
Next year’s Consumer Electronics Show will start on January 6th in Las Vegas and will continue until the 9th. It’s there that BMW will show off an i3 prototype that’s equipped with an even more advanced version of ActiveAssist. Not wanting to wait that long, however, the company has decided to give us a bit of a teaser.
“BMW was already demonstrating at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2014 how perfect control technology can provide highly automated mastery of all drive statuses right through to very tight margins. Innovative sensors will allow BMW to demonstrate a number of features at the CES 2015 (6 to 9 January, Las Vegas) including the possibility of entirely collision-free driving,” said the company in an official press release.
The newly updated ActiveAssit utilizes an array of advanced sensors and laser scanners that power its highly-accurate position and environment recognition systems. This enables any vehicle that’s equipped with ActiveAssist to maneuver itself in virtually any situation that a driver may come across.
The company plans to demonstrate the updated technology in a parking lot where the built-in systems will scan and identify obstructions so that the ActiveAssist-equipped vehicle will be able to autonomously navigate through the parking lot, even when the driver isn’t inside. The system can not only recognize and avoid structural features, it can even avoid obstacles that appear unexpectedly.
“The platform for 360-degree collision avoidance is secure position and environment recognition. The research vehicle is a BMW i3. Four advanced laser scanners record the environment and reliably identify impediments such as columns, for example in a multi-storey car park. If the vehicle approaches a wall or a column too quickly, the system brakes automatically to prevent the threat of collision. The vehicle is brought to a standstill very precisely with centimetres to spare,” continued the company in the press release.
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