Cars that help park themselves have been in production for awhile, but teachable cars are the next new thing. Volkswagen is developing a car that “learns” how to park in your driveway. It takes its initial instruction from the driver, and then carries out the task, making adjustments as it goes. The trained car comes with an awareness of pedestrians and obstacles and will stop if it senses something in the way. According to cnet.com:
The new Trained Parking system is an evolution of this technology. The next-generation system adds a forward-facing camera to the sensor package and can autonomously guide the vehicle into a preselected parking spot without a driver behind the wheel. The system can also autonomously retrieve the vehicle when the driver calls upon it with a smartphone. It’s like a robotic valet for your home.
Where the semi-automatic parking is designed for unfamiliar public spaces, Trained Parking is called “Trained” because the user must first teach the car the path between the passenger drop-off point and its regular parking space, so it’s only useful at home. Volkswagen tells us that training this is as simple as driving the route once – for example, from your front door to your garage space – and allowing the sonar and camera sensors to scan the environment along the way.
I’m trying to figure out how trained parking would work in my driveway, and I honestly can’t see the feature being useful to me at all. If I had a tight garage, I might want to get out of my car in the driveway and then ask the car to park itself, but that’s not the case. I don’t want to get out at my own curb either. It’s an amazing development that will probably be most helpful in very specific scenarios.
Read the entire article here.
4 Responses
I think you are thinking about this the wrong way. Instead of making the technology work for how we do things now is wrong. Technology is for changing how we do things. Big difference.
I have no issue with technology, or with the massive improvements and positive changes it has brought to almost every facet of our lives. However, there are limitations to what is considered “better”, and in may cases these advances in technology can actually create more issues/problems than they solve. In the case of self driving cars we’re most likely looking at technology that is going to be more of a novelty than something that changes our lives (at least in our lifetimes). The concept is very cool, but the reality of how the world works is going to make it very hard for this technology to actually become the new “normal”; http://spectrum.ieee.org/cars-that-think/transportation/self-driving/future-of-self-driving-cars-detroit-panel
There is an endless list of new technology being introduced on an almost daily basis that offer “solutions in search of a problem”.
I’m definitely not against developing technologies, but I admit to being skeptical. In this case, the teachable car technology is awesome, but I can’t see how it could work in my life – yet. If you’ve read about the suspension of sales of Google Glass, you’ll see what I mean. It’s amazing, but seems to outpace the user.