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Driverless Automobiles-The Car That Parks Itself

Autonomous vehicles are arriving piecemeal, as more and more driving tasks are taken out of human hands. CARS that need no driver are just around the corner according to Google, which has been testing vehicles bristling with aerials and cameras on public roads in America. But Google does not make cars, so it will be up to firms that do to bring the _________ to market. And carmakers are a conservative bunch. Still, slowly and _________ the autonomous car will arrive, with the help of an increasing number of automated driving aids.

Volvo recently _________ one such feature: a car that really does park itself. Some cars already have systems that assist with parking, but these are not completely autonomous. They can _________ an empty parallel-parking space and steer into it while the driver uses the brake. The Volvo system, however, lets the driver get out and use a smartphone application to _________ the vehicle to park, then sends a message to the driver to inform him where it is. The driver can collect the car _________ or use his phone to call it back to where he dropped it off. Autonomous parking could thus be provided at places like shopping centres and airports, which are controlled areas in which automated vehicles can be _________ more easily than on open highways.

In the past, _________ for doing this have relied on car parks being fitted with buried guide wires that a vehicle can follow to an empty bay. That, _________, creates a chicken-and-egg problem: car-park operators will not invest in such infrastructure until there is a(an)__________ number of suitably equipped cars on the road. Drivers, conversely, will not want to buy self-parking cars if there is nowhere to use them. This means, as Mikael Thor, a Volvo safety engineer working on the project, __________, that for autonomous parking to work most of the technology will have to be in the car itself.

The Volvo test car, which looks like a(an) __________ car, therefore uses on-board GPS mapping, cameras with image-recognition software, and radar sensors to find its own way around a car park and __________ pedestrians and non-autonomous vehicles. Mr. Thor says the system is five to ten years from commercial deployment. If it proves a success then infrastructure might __________ it.

Driverless cars would also need to communicate with one another, to __________ safety. That, too, is coming. A number of carmakers are developing wireless networking systems through which vehicles can exchange data, such as their speed, their steering angle and even their weight, to forewarn anti-collision systems and safety devices if an accident looks likely.