Visitors to the Mercedes-Benz Museum in Stuttgart will find some of the most iconic vehicles produced across more than a century of automotive history. Soon, they may also get a glimpse of the industry's future.

Daimler and Bosch are using the museum's parking garage to launch an automated valet feature that can be accessed via a smartphone app and requires no human safety driver. Vehicle occupants can be dropped off near the entrance to the museum, and then the car will park itself in a designated spot in the garage.

The companies have been testing the system for the past year in the garage. Recently, they reached a milestone: They say the feature is the first fully driverless parking function to receive regulatory approval in Germany.

Enabling the parking valet at future locations will require further green lights from regulators. But officials from Daimler and Bosch view the approval at the museum as the first step to self-driving technology someday changing the way travelers access public spaces.

"You can imagine an airport," says Rolf Nicodemus, head of connected parking at Bosch. "The best place to park currently is in a parking garage. Because there's a need to be near the terminal, this automated vehicle parking can dramatically change things. You can then use parking areas that are not so attractive, and it changes the whole DNA of the parking situation."

At least for now, the Bosch-Daimler project is small in scope. Two cars equipped with the parking system are available to be hired, Bosch says, from a local sales-and-service outlet so that customers can experience the technology at the museum.