Watch a Volvo find its own parking spot

Cars that can navigate into a preselected parking spot have been around for a few years now, and they've proven that under the right conditions they can pull it off successfully most of the time. But what about a car that finds its own parking spot just after you step out?

Volvo is about to show a car that can do just that, and it manages this feat without an array of sensors on the roof that make the car look like a military aircraft. So, a few days before Volvo shows it to a group of journalists next week, it has posted a video of a V40 finding its own parking spot.

The system works quite simply, according to Volvo (if you're the owner, anyway, because you really don't have to do much). Simply drop off your car at a designated spot in the parking lot, step out, hit a button on your key fob, and the car will drive around the parking lot looking for an empty spot, and then pull into it. When you're done with your errands, return to the parking lot, hit another button on the key fob, and the car will return to the spot where it dropped you off. It's just like when your parents dropped you off at school, except you don't have to wait hours and hours as they show up late.

Volvo doesn't say whether the car will be able to distinguish between a handicapped-only parking spot and a regular parking spot. Also, Volvo is mum on whether the car will be selective about the vehicles it parks next to, such as ones that look like their drivers are likely to dent the side of your car when opening their doors. Some road surface infrastructure is required for this system, but given the state of driverless car development, we'd say that cars are going to be able to do this all by themselves without any communication with stationary devices in the road in just a few years.

This development of this system is another step in the direction of driverless cars, which seem to be just over the horizon. And the development of these stepping-stone technologies is exactly how consumers are going to get used to the concept of cars driving themselves.

By Jay Ramey