“Laughter is an instant vacation”

Original Article

In New York, it’s very hard to find a parking spot, and recently, the first robotic car parking system opened in Chinatown in New York. It’s been pretty successful in a lot of the other places in the world, but not in the United States. In fact, it has been very destructive. In New Jersey, the garage has been known to drop unoccupied cars up to 6 stories! In the beginning of last year, there was a problem that wasn’t repaired for 26 hours, with the cars trapped inside.

But still, the makers of the Chinatown garage are very confident that this time, it would work. They estimated that the garage will fit 67 cars that would only usually fit 24. There isn’t a humanoid robot that goes inside your car and drives it. Instead, the driver stops on a pallet and gets out of the car. Then the pallet is lowered into the inner parts of the garage, and maneuvers it to an empty parking spot. The spots are computer controlled, it’s kind of like an elevator but it can also move sideways.

Inside the garage, there are no humans, but there are attendants to accept cash and explain how this robot works.

Even though these accidents have occurred, the maker assure people that “It is a complete virtual impossibility that damage can occur.”

There are laser and radar sensors to detect if the car fits onto the pallet, then it scans for movement to determine whether the people in the car have left the car or not. When the car is parked on the pallet and ready to go, the driver is told to exit the car and leave the bay, and a door closes behind them before starting to maneuver the car into the garage.

When the driver returns to leave, the underground system retrieves the car, sometimes moving things around but it all works out.