Investment in AI specialist for automated parking

Con­ti­nen­tal, the well-known tech­nol­o­gy com­pa­ny, is invest­ing in the Leipzig-based start­up Kopernikus Auto­mo­tive and tak­ing a minor­i­ty stake. Both com­pa­nies have agreed not to dis­close the invest­ment amount. As a spe­cial­ist in autonomous dri­ving tech­nolo­gies, Kopernikus devel­ops, among oth­er things, solu­tions for infra­struc­ture-based maneu­ver­ing and maneu­ver­ing of vehi­cles. The tech­nol­o­gy is based on sen­sors per­ma­nent­ly installed in the infra­struc­ture and arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence-based algo­rithms that cen­tral­ly con­trol the vehi­cles. The first two use cas­es for this tech­nol­o­gy are auto­mat­ed park­ing in park­ing garages, also known as Auto­mat­ed Valet Park­ing (AVP), and autonomous maneu­ver­ing of, for exam­ple, new­ly pro­duced vehi­cles at vehi­cle man­u­fac­tur­ers or in logis­tics areas. 

Already today, the first vehi­cles are being dri­ven through vehi­cle fac­to­ries with­out a dri­ver and based on infra­struc­ture — this tech­nol­o­gy will also sig­nif­i­cant­ly change park­ing in the near future. For Auto­mat­ed Valet Park­ing, the dri­ver gets out — for exam­ple at an air­port ter­mi­nal — hands over the vehi­cle to the infra­struc­ture via an app and the car is parked autonomous­ly. The vehi­cle is guid­ed through the infra­struc­ture installed in the park­ing garage. Cam­eras serve as sen­sors here. At the heart of the sys­tem are AI-based algo­rithms that ensure safe and opti­mal orches­tra­tion and guid­ance of all vehi­cles. Kopernikus Auto­mo­tive pro­vides such a solu­tion, which can be used to equip any park­ing garage, hotel or air­port in a cost-effec­tive way — mak­ing it ready for autonomous parking.

The pre­req­ui­site for the use of the solu­tion is an addi­tion­al vehi­cle func­tion (Cen­tral Motion Con­trol), which con­verts the path curve (tra­jec­to­ry) spec­i­fied by the intel­li­gent infra­struc­ture into the con­trol of the cor­re­spond­ing actu­a­tor tech­nol­o­gy. The vehi­cle com­po­nents required for this are an auto­mat­ic trans­mis­sion, an elec­tric park­ing brake, elec­tric steer­ing assis­tance and an intel­li­gent com­mu­ni­ca­tion unit. These are already installed as stan­dard in many vehicles. 

“In the future, cars will be moved autonomous­ly in fac­to­ries and also in park­ing garages. A safe, com­fort­able and afford­able solu­tion is being devel­oped by Kopernikus and Con­ti­nen­tal togeth­er. At Con­ti­nen­tal, we are work­ing on both solu­tions, autonomous park­ing, which is based on vehi­cle sen­sor data, and a solu­tion based on intel­li­gent infra­struc­ture — sim­i­lar to smart inter­sec­tions. The par­tic­i­pa­tion in Kopernikus is the log­i­cal next step for us to fur­ther advance both top­ics and offer a mar­ketable solu­tion in a time­ly manner.”

- Ralph Laux­mann, Head of Strat­e­gy and Future Solutions

At the IAA Mobil­i­ty 2021 in Munich from Sep­tem­ber 6 to 12, vis­i­tors will be able to expe­ri­ence the col­lab­o­ra­tion between Con­ti­nen­tal and Kopernikus in action for the first time: Togeth­er with Ford, BMW, Mer­cedes-Benz and Jaguar-Land Rover, as well as Volk­swa­gen’s auto­mo­tive soft­ware sub­sidiary CARIAD, Con­ti­nen­tal and Kopernikus will be show­ing a joint dri­ving demon­stra­tion in the IAA exhi­bi­tion park­ing garage in Munich.

As part of the VDA’s Auto­mat­ed Valet Park­ing (AVP) project, the main focus will be on demon­strat­ing the inter­op­er­abil­i­ty of the infra­struc­ture-based solu­tion with sev­er­al vehi­cle man­u­fac­tur­ers and oth­er infra­struc­ture providers. “Here you can see live how we inter­act with dif­fer­ent vehi­cle man­u­fac­tur­ers and brands to make autonomous park­ing a real­i­ty for every­one,” says Ste­fan Jen­zowsky, Man­ag­ing Direc­tor of Kopernikus Automotive.