One year after testing began at the Mercedes-Benz Museum in Stuttgart, Daimler and Bosch have now opened their first Automated Valet Parking pilot in Beijing.

The choice of the city was not arbitrary, as Daimler recently became the first international automaker to receive a road test license for highly automated driving research vehicles (Level 4 autonomy) in Beijing.

Automated Valet Parking is an important step toward autonomous driving. Based on an intelligent infrastructure developed by Bosch, it allows drivers to bypass the need for a valet by instructing their vehicle to park itself via a smartphone app. The first pilot of its kind in China, Automated Valet Parking enables vehicles to park in an assigned space, with the user later retrieving the vehicle via their smartphone.

So how does it work, exactly? The driver first has to park the car in a designated drop-off area and then use the smartphone app to send it to be parked. After the intelligent system infrastructure installed in the car park registers the vehicle, it starts and guides it to an assigned parking space.

More specifically, sensors installed in the car park monitor the driving corridor and its surroundings while taking control of the vehicle. The car’s onboard technology maneuvers it in response to commands from the intelligent car park infrastructure. When the user is ready to pick up the car, they can use the smartphone app again to summon and wait for it to arrive in the pick-up area.

The following video demonstrates how Automated Valet Parking actually works. Guess the job a valet parker will, sooner or later, become obsolete.