
Audi to field test automated parking, V2X in Boston suburb
During the Smart City Expo World Congress in Barcelona (Spain), Somerville city mayor Joseph A. Curtone and Audi CEO Rupert Stadler signed a Memorandum of Understanding that provides a close collaboration in developing a new mobility strategy for the US city. “The intelligent car can unfold its enormous potential only in a smart city. Key fur useful swarm intelligence is to the joint work on urban innovations as well as exchange and analysis of data”, Stadler said. Goals of the collaboration are techniques that reduce the space requirements of vehicles in urban spaces and improve the traffic flow.

Within the scope of the project Audi plans to implement a connected infrastructure and piloted parking. According to Audi’s belief, self-parking vehicles can offer three benefits: Parking garages can be moved from the cities to less attractive areas of cities. At the same time, the space required to park for a car can be reduced by about two square metres (about 21 square feet) since with automated parking schemes in place, the vehicles can be parked closer together and require narrower lanes in the garages. Since the cars move autonomously, no paths for pedestrians, staircases and elevators are required any longer.

Thus, the size of the parking garages can be reduced by about 60 percent for the same number of cars, estimates Audi. In addition, significantly less traffic will occur in the streets since vehicles searching for a parking space contribute significantly to the traffic, especially in city centres.
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