Getting vehicles from the assembly line to the test bench without a driver will soon be a realistic alternative. So says Bosch, which has developed an automated vehicle manoeuvring solution for vehicles on factory premises.
Based on its automated valet parking system, Bosch equips the manufacturer’s plant with a lidar-sensor infrastructure, which it supplements, where required, with Bosch stereo cameras. The information from the sensors is fed into computers which tell the vehicle which route to take. In this way, Bosch says it makes it possible for vehicles to manoeuvre without drivers.
The company says it is in talks with various carmakers regarding the installation of automated vehicle manoeuvring in their plants and says the system can be used in a wide range of applications both inside and outside the manufacturing shop. The system can, for example, move vehicles through calibration lines while maintaining a constant speed and, should a manufacturing error be detected, will automatically drive the vehicle to the plant’s repair shop. Also, once a car has reached the end of the assembly line, it can drive out of the factory and into the logistics parking area, ready for its onward journey.
The system uses the same principles as Bosch’s automated valet parking. Approved for use in Germany, that system is a fully automated driverless parking function which enables drivers to park their car in a drop-off area and leave it to Bosch’s intelligent parking garage infrastructure and the technology installed in the vehicle to work together to find a free parking space and move the car into it.
Source: Motor Trader e-Magazine (June 2023)
8 June 2023