Reported October, 2007

BACKGROUND: Would you trust a robot to park your car? New Yorkers will confront that question as the city's first robotic parking garage opens in Chinatown.

HOW IT WORKS: There won't be a humanoid robot actually parking your vehicle; the garage itself does the parking. The driver stops the car atop a pallet and gets out. The pallet is then lowered into the innards of the garage and transported to a vacant parking space by a computer-controlled apparatus, similar to an elevator, except it also runs sideways, not just up and down. An array of laser and radar sensors let the system know if the car fits on the pallet, and detect movement to ensure that the driver and passenger have left the car before the pallet begins to move. When the driver returns, the system retrieves the car. Because it parks cars two deep in some spots, it may be necessary to shuffle cars around to retrieve a vehicle. The software system can figure out those logistics. An underground turntable turns the car around before it is lifted to the surface, so it is already facing out into the driveway. Drivers need not have to maneuver their own vehicles by backing out of a garage -- a common cause of accidents. An attendant will be on-site to handle financial transactions and explain the system to would-be clients.

PROS AND CONS: The developers of the Chinatown garage believe that the technology will enable them to squeeze 67 cars into an apartment-building basement that would otherwise only fit 24 cars. While other countries report great success implementing this robotic technology, the only other robotic parking garage in the United States is in New Jersey and has had some technical glitches, with instances of dropped or trapped vehicles due to system malfunctions. (Nobody was in the vehicles at the time.) The operators of the New Jersey robotic garage dismiss these as "freak incidents," and say that the current generation of robotic parking garages is vastly improved in terms of the technology: software, machinery, and more high-tech components such as laser and radar sensors.

The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc., contributed to the information contained in the TV portion of this report.

If you would like more information, please contact:

Meghan Chrisner (Public Affairs Officer
for AutoMotion Parking Systems)
New York, NY 10004
(646) 654-3439
mchrisner@nikecomm.com

Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers,
Inc. IEEE-USA
Washington, DC 20036-5104
(202) 785-0017
http://www.ieee.org
ieeeusa@ieee.org

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