Remember the scene in Tomorrow Never Dies, the 1997 James Bond film where Bond controls his BMW 750iL with his smart phone through a parking garage while avoiding gun fire and missile attacks? Well save for the enemy hostiles, Audi demonstrates how a new autonomous driver function within their Audi Connect system can navigate a parking structure. The A7 even one-ups James Bond by parking itself without any driver input. Bond had to manually control his car.
The downfall of the Audi Connect system is that it requires the parking structure to be outfitted with special lasers that communicate via WIFI to the A7’s computer. The lasers and on-board parking sensors tell the computer where the car is located and what’s around it. Once rolling though, the entire system works without human input.
The Audi A7 in the video below gives a futuristic glimpse of what downtown garages and mall parking lots might look like – although likely many years off when cars won’t require the use of external technologies to communicate location. Audi says GPS was ruled out because of unpredictable signal strength in concrete parking garages.
Check out the new Audi Connect system in action.
