We may be a few years away from having completely autonomous vehicles on the roads, but already derivatives of this advanced technology are making their way to road cars. One feature of the autonomous driving that has trickled down to the real world – and a welcome one, it has to be said – is automated parking.

This system is designed to save the driver the hassle of finding a parking spot and actually parking the car. What it does, in essence, is enable the driver to flick a few switches on his or her smartphone, and then walkaway. The car itself will find a spot, park itself, and lock the doors. The best part is that when you are ready to get going again, the car can come out of the parking spot and pick you up. Isn’t that brilliant?

Audi was the first to showcase a fully functional application of autonomous parking, and Volvo has come to play with a similar system. These are all in concept mode for now, but eventually, you are going to get this system in an average family hatchback.

Auto parking still has its limitations of course. Volvo’s system is not available everywhere. It uses a Vehicle 2 Infrastructure technology, in other words transmitters in the road infrastructure, and that makes things complicated. Where it works though, it uses a combination of obstacle detection radars, cameras, sensors, and auto driving and braking systems to locate a parking space and navigate itself into it. The procedure is reversed when the driver comes back to pick up the car.

“Autonomous Parking is a concept technology that relieves the driver of the time-consuming task of finding a vacant parking space. The driver just drops the vehicle off at the entrance to the car park and picks it up in the same place later,” says Thomas Broberg, Senior Safety Advisor Volvo Car Group.