On September 14, a Mercedes Benz E63 completed an automatic valet parking show in the underground parking garage of Mercedes Benz passenger car China R & D center. Different from the past, there are rows of lidar products in the parking garage. There was no driver on the Mercedes Benz E63. The staff gently clicked on the mobile phone, and the E63 drove from the drop off area to the parking space, completing automatic valet parking.Last July, Daimler and Bosch announced the launch of the "Daimler automatic parking" pilot project at the museum in Stuttgart, Germany. Dormant for more than a year, Daimler's automatic valet parking technology made its debut in China today (September 14). Daimler and Bosch are also publicized in the world's second and China's first automatic valet parking scene demonstration area based on intelligent infrastructure. It is worth mentioning that the first demonstration area is located in Stuttgart, Germany.Joint construction of car, yard and cloud

Daimler and Bosch provide an automatic valet parking solution based on the combination of automatic driving technology based on intelligent infrastructure and real-life scenes. It is built and integrated in three aspects: car end, field end and cloud end, which is suitable for the current mixed parking environment.In terms of vehicle end, Bosch's automatic valet parking scheme reduces the technical requirements for vehicle sensors. Without the "burden" of high-cost lidar sensors, models equipped with basic auxiliary driving functions such as electronic steering, electronic braking, body electronic stability system, remote interconnection and remote start and stop can also carry out automatic valet parking.Parking end construction, that is, intelligent service based on parking lot, is the basic part of automatic valet parking solution. Bosch constructs a series of parking end equipment to complete the visual perception, decision-making and control of vehicles in the process of automatic parking. Wang Ting, director of Bosch intelligent network business department, explained the field end scheme with the descriptions of "eyes", "brain" and "mouth":

Eyes: lidar, sensors and other visual equipment. Daimler and Bosch's automatic valet parking scheme selects to layout a large number of lidar products in the parking lot and visual sensors to identify environmental information for environmental monitoring, obstacle detection and vehicle positioning in the parking lot, which will play a key role in the process of automatic valet parking; Wang Ting said that compared with automobile sensors with blind spots, laying lidar and sensor products in the parking lot can realize 360 degree road information detection without dead angle;Brain: local server. Bosch has created a local server for the parking lot, including the parking lot map. As the "brain" of intelligent parking lot, the server plans vehicle routes and makes obstacle avoidance decisions according to user needs;Key words: Internet server. Automatic valet parking is a technology to guide vehicles based on intelligent infrastructure. Bosch arranges IOT equipment in the parking lot and transmits the information to the car through the Internet server.

In the cloud, Bosch and Daimler have created an app application to help car owners confirm parking routes and pay fees.Independent of a car sensorThe focus of automatic valet parking is not on high level self driving cars, but also on vehicle networking and vehicle road coordination technology.

The demonstration garage is equipped with a drop off area, a pick-up area and a "service area" that Daimler plans to achieve in the future. At the same time, multiple lidar products are closely arranged to conduct 360 ° real-time monitoring of the surrounding environment. Mercedes Benz E63 demonstrated four parking scenarios, including "service area" parking, finding parking spaces, obstacle avoidance and multi vehicle exit.

Chen Ming, President of Bosch intelligent network business unit, explained in detail the technical process of completing automatic valet parking for a vehicle to xinzhijia: before using the automatic valet parking app, the manufacturer or Bosch certified the vehicle model in advance. In this process, Bosch will collect its vehicle information to the cloud, including vehicle model and body size, and create a path algorithm in advance according to the model size. When the vehicle enters the parking garage and drives to the drop off area at the specified location, the owner clicks the "parking / service" button on the mobile app, and the local server will give the vehicle an established algorithm model to make the vehicle drive according to the established route.

In judging whether there are spare parking spaces, the lidar products in the parking garage will play a role in monitoring the information of spare parking spaces. The local server plans the route according to the parking spaces rather than relying on the vehicle end sensors.Chen Ming also mentioned that in terms of cost, the layout of sensors such as lidar and camera at the field end has more advantages than that at the vehicle end. In the mass production stage, Bosch will replace the lidar products in the current demonstration parking garage with low-cost binocular cameras in the future.Automatic valet parking service with Chinese characteristics

Daimler said that automatic valet parking service improves people's travel efficiency. In the absence of drivers, automatic valet parking can realize one click parking in the future, and this service will also improve the utilization of parking space by 20%. Because there is no need to open the door, the vehicles can stop closer. Through online management, cars don't have to go around the parking lot, they can go directly to the parking spot and save fuel costs.The automatic valet parking technology scheme proposed by Daimler and Bosch in China is more in line with the local road environment and living habits. Different from the single lane road environment in Germany, China adopts two lane driving technology, and multiple vehicles can realize driverless under the background control of automatic valet parking at the same time.For Chinese car owners, Daimler and Bosch put forward the concept of value-added services, such as automatic charging of electric vehicles, automatic car washing and other application scenarios. In the era of intelligent vehicles, the parking lot is no longer a simple parking area, but an automobile service center. Automatic valet parking helps realize the unmanned charging and car washing in the parking lot, so that car owners can also enjoy automatic charging, car washing and other services during parking.

Although Daimler and Bosch did not disclose the specific opening time of automatic valet parking for users. But both sides are constantly emphasizing that the low-cost camera solution in car park layout is more reliable than the automatic driving vehicle equipped with lidar.