Park by Robot at London Gatwick Airport

I will give you a reason why this might be useful. Not at Gatwick. (I always took the train when I lived in that area and usually ended up at Heathrow or Stanstead anyway). But at Raleigh NC for example, you have to go up 5 levels to find a spot, (I have never seen an open spot on levels 1-4) and spend about 10 minutes or more finding a spot after that, then walking from your spot to the elevator, then back out. Or sometimes the lot is filled up, and you have to drive to a lot far away, then spend even longer finding a spot that will be at the far end of the lot, then walking a good distance to the bus terminal.

This solves that problem; not the bus one.

Exactly, i think this product is solving an airport problem and not a user problem. Whenever i park at an airport i always look for the shortest distance to terminal / price, then chose an option that lands within an acceptable range. Unless i'm way for very long shuttle-bus isn't really on the table.

Think of it as picking the parking garage or lot you like, but skipping the hunt for an open spot.

As these things go, if the service provider is able to make step one work and the airport continues the partnership, an eventual step would indeed be coming closer to or at the terminal, and the robot scooters (sounds a little like scaled-up warehouse robots) would move the car to storage.

Article says one of the terminals is within walking distance

My company used to cover a car service for us (limo), my door to the terminal.

When they set up the AirTrain, I stopped using the car service. It took longer, but I have always had a soft spot for mass transit, and I kind of got a kick out of boarding a train in Huntington, NY, and leaving the train, in Shinagawa.

Yeah because I want to haul all my luggage on a train journey when I go to the airport. I’ll take a train to a lot of places but the airport is not one of them.

Personally I wonder why didn't they put several Pater Noster parking machines instead.

Systems with eight slots have decent throughout, the same density as cars parked side-by-side and bumper-to-bumper - even including the space needed to roll out - and are mechanically simple compared to just about anything else in this space.

Yes. If you can get under it.

This technique is frequently used by towing companies impounding cars and reposession agents collecting cars for loan defaults - absolutely you can pick up and take a car away with the right hardware.

Just for most people a stolen locked car isn’t really of much uses.

You give them the keys, then they go to the site to collect your item.

First thing I thought, too. Seems like mutually exclusive features.

I don't think car alarms detect these kinds of vibrations. It's specifically tilt and more impactful stuff. Certainly, the alarm is never going off when I get my car back via the lifts that I've used. It's probably too smooth.

Wow, who is subsidizing it?

That is pretty good pricing. I’m surprised. I wonder if this is just introductory pricing. It seems like there’s not much throughput for something like this. I can’t see how this could handle a constant stream of people wanting to park their cars.

It's the perfect juxtaposition of stories.

Not too hard to enforce this with cameras and not let the driver lock the garage I assume. Maybe they're already doing that

The local car wash has lights that help you park the car pretty precisely under the wash robot. No rails or anything, you park right underneath the robot and it moves around and over the car. The robot doesn't start until you are in position.

IMO this would be a terrible idea to let the robots park cars in the same car park as humans. They most likely have a dedicated car park for this where ever car is parked by a robot.

The article says:

"A Stanley Robotics autonomous parking robot then slides underneath the vehicle, lifts it by its tyres and transports it to a secure storage area."

Which seems to suggest this.

> a car catches fire

That's a solved problem, drench the car in copious amounts of water and flush all oxygen with high pressure CO2 tanks.

Well if there are 100 cars waiting in line for the little garage to be available it defeats the purpose

There are some horror stories when those kind of systems break down.

For example this one is about a van which got stuck in one for two years: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cx207jwknp5o

Or there was one in Sweden which trapped cars for 2 months: https://www.mitti.se/nyheter/fnurret-pa-psnurran--m-vill-se-... (sorry, could only find a swedish source)

It is because these kind of systems are complicated bespoke automation. When it breaks down it costs a fortune to fix it. And what can happen is that different parties (operators vs manufacture vs maintainer) gets into a contract dispute to see who is liable to pay to get it fixed. Which as you can guess can take years to play out. Meanwhile your vehicle is stuck and nobody who could is interested in spending a penny on getting it out.

In contrast to that this project is better in two ways. There are multiple robots. (or at least there really should be) So if one breaks down the other robots can still retrieve cars (albeit of course with reduced throughput). And because the storage is just a flat parking lot if all the robots give up the ghost at the same time humans can drive out the cars from the edges of the storage rows.

Where was this? I've only seen it in London at very high end residential places. Even then it's rare. Most privately-owned public car parks in London are dilapidated and full of thieves, but still command premium pricing. It would surprise me if one bothered to build the infra for this.

A fenced off flat parking lot with a few cameras here and there. Not sure what you expect.

You can see it on Google maps: https://maps.app.goo.gl/MQjWHbbc5jeUryGU7?g_st=ic

If you knew what it looked like, it wouldn't be as secure!

I doubt the robots have sufficient enough traction/mobility to navigate on any surface that isn't reasonably smooth like tarmac. Also I'd wager the car park the robots go to isn't that far away from the drop off location, most likely on the same land owned by the airport.