Parkopedia announced it has won a multi-million-pound grant award from the Centre for Connected & Autonomous Vehicles (CCAV) to accelerate the development of autonomous valet parking technology. Parkopedia leads the project consortium which includes the Centre for Vision, Speech & Signal Processing at the University of Surrey (CVSSP) and the Transport Systems Catapult (TSC).

The main focus of the project is the development of autonomous valet parking technology, including indoor parking maps, which allows a driver to be dropped off in front of a multistory parking facility or their final destination and the vehicle to park itself fully autonomously. Upon returning, a driver can summon the vehicle back using a smartphone or a smartwatch.

Richard Harrington MP, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at the Department for Business, Energy, and Industrial Strategy, commented, "Through these competitions, we are offering innovative businesses support to take their projects to the next level and help them achieve commercial success. The projects that we are nurturing mean that we are a step closer to securing our place as a world leader in self-driving vehicles."

"This significant investment is a mark of the innovation that is at the heart of our modern industrial strategy. The development of new technologies is a cornerstone of the UK's world-class science and research, and will ensure that we deliver a Britain fit for the future by creating jobs and the skills needed to succeed."

Brian Holt, head of Autonomous Driving at Parkopedia, added, "Autonomous Valet Parking will be one of the first fully autonomous features available to the general public. Parkopedia is uniquely positioned to provide the full range of parking services including the detailed indoor parking maps required to power autonomous vehicles globally, and the CCAV grant will enable us to accelerate the ongoing development of this exciting new technology."

Parkopedia is a parking service provider used drivers and organizations, including Apple, Audi, BMW, Coyote, Ford, Garmin, GM, HERE, Jaguar, Land Rover, Peugeot, Sygic, TomTom, Toyota, Volkswagen, and Volvo. It provides detailed static information on 60 million parking spaces in more than 8000 cities, including real-time parking space availability information in over 2000 cities. The service enables drivers to find the closest parking to their destination, and tells them how much it will cost and whether the space is available. Parkopedia also allows drivers to pay for parking online, through a mobile app and in-car system.