It is if you think we're talking about park assist technology, which can manoeuvre a car into a space once a human on board has pressed a button. But we're not. This is V-Charge.
What does that mean?
It's an automated version of valet parking, the V standing for, er... valet, but the 'Charge' bit is the most interesting. While V-Charge software would work fine for a regular combustion engine vehicle, it's best use is for electric cars.
How so?
The driver pulls up to a pre-defined drop-off/pick-up bay and gets out of the car - they then never have to set foot in the parking area at all. Using a smartphone app, a link is established to the car and the driver can tell it to head off and find a space.
Right. So it then parks itself automatically?
Yep. A digital map of the parking area is relayed to the car's on-board software and off it toddles to find a suitable bay to sequester itself in. Clever enough for 'normal' cars, but electric vehicles go a stage further.
In what way?
They prioritise any bays with charging points and go for those first, if they're free. Inductive charging points - that's right, no leads required - then re-juice the on-board battery. And, once the car has recharged itself, it doesn't loiter in the charging bay for the rest of the day, hampering other worthy EV users. Instead, it automatically extricates itself from the bay and goes to find a regular parking slot elsewhere in the defined area. At the end of the day, the driver simply recalls the vehicle from wherever it is in the parking zone to the pick-up point and it drives back autonomously.
Clever stuff. But can it recognise obstacles?
Volkswagen would be heading for Litigation City if it couldn't. Cameras and ultrasound sensors on the car can recognise 'mixed traffic', such as pedestrians, cyclists and other vehicles.
Is Volkswagen doing this all by itself?
No, there are a number of other organisations working on the V-Charge project with the carmaker. They are: the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (visual localisation, movement planning and vehicle control); Braunschweig Technical University (car park management and vehicle-to-infrastructure - V2I - communication); Bosch (sensor technology); Parma University (object recognition); and Oxford University (development of detailed navigation maps of the parking areas).
Are valet parkers doomed to redundancy, then?
Probably. And just to rub salt into the wound, check out this video of the prototype software in action to see how slick it is already:
