Throwing
your keys at the parking valet as you sashay onto a flight may seem
like the stuff of James Bond films, but already a robotic valet is
taking the sweat out of getting on a plane at Germany's Dusseldorf
airport.
Rather than getting
behind the wheel, however, this robotic valet physically lifts your
three tons of road machinery and slots it into pre-designated robot
parking bays.
Nicknamed RAY by its creators, the automated forklift truck is the brainchild of Germany's Serva Transport.
Aimed
at business travelers in a hurry, the automated parking system can be
controlled and booked via an app. All travelers have to do is drop the
car off in a designated area, go to a nearby touch screen to confirm the
car is empty, and RAY does the rest.
RAY
uses sensors to measure and photograph the car, it then gently lifts it
and takes it to one of 249 parking spots reserved for the robot
forklifts.
The company claims that its space-saving
system -- which uses lasers and sensors to measure not just the height
and width of the cars but accessories such as wing mirrors and fenders
-- can park 60% more cars than a human driver.
The
system is also connected to the airport's flight data system: RAY will
retrieve the car based on flight itineraries. The app also lets car
owners communicate with RAY if there are any flight delays.
The
airport charges €29 a day ($40) or €4 ($5.50) an hour for the service,
which the airport's management said was likely to appeal to
time-strapped corporates.
"Our product
is especially appealing to business travelers, who arrive at the airport
shortly before the flight, seek efficient parking, and return within a
few days," Thomas Schnalke, the airport's managing director, said in a
statement.
video source:euronews Knowledge
A new tie-up with Volkswagen
announced this month aims to increase the efficiency of RAY by getting
the car and the parking robot to communicate with each other.
"Our
jointly developed technology exchanges data automatically between RAY
and Volkswagen cars via Bluetooth and thus facilitates the parking
progress," said Rupert Kock, the managing director at Serva Transport
Systems.
But RAY is not the only robot valet on the block.
A
New Jersey startup called Boomerang also aims to take parking to the
next level by using an automated parking system that can park hundreds
of cars without human intervention.
Shuffling
them like the squares in a giant Rubik's Cube in garages that need no
light and little ventilation, the company says the system not only saves
on energy but can fit more cars into a smaller space, freeing up
valuable land for other real estate. According
to Boomerang CEO Mark Patterson the advantage of his system is that it
is designed with multiple entry bays, multiple robots and multiple lifts
so there is no single point of failure. "If any one thing goes down, we can still operate the system," he told CNN.
Drivers
put their car into a parking bay that places the car on a large steel
tray. Robotic wheeled platforms slide under the vehicle and then
transport it to the bays following buried wires in the floor of the
carpark.
Patterson says its increased throughput means the bays can be filled and emptied more quickly than conventional carparks.
"Our
system is installed in a garage with level concrete floors so there's
total fire separation between floors like in a conventional garage -
most legacy systems are steel rack structures with no separation between
floors," he said.
"Developers like it because you can park 100% more cars in the same space and that's a big value proposition."
The other advantage is that the carpark is a 'sterile' environment that has no need for human intervention.
"The
cars are not running in these garages so there's a big savings on air
handling equipment," Patterson said. "You need seven or eight air
changes an hour with traditional carparks versus just one or two with
this system."
Similarly, there's also
no need to illuminate the building to the sort of levels that would
deter muggers or other attackers that lurk in the gloom of multi-story
carparks.
"Robots don't care if it's dark," Patterson said.
source: CNN
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