
Ray, the self-driving forklift that is parking cars at a German airport - digisth
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/innovations/wp/2014/07/01/meet-ray-the-self-driving-forklift-that-is-parking-cars-at-a-german-airport/
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vanderZwan
Given what I know about the reliability of German forkliftdrivers[0] I'm not
surprised they automated this one.

[0]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ChOHnSL7ZCg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ChOHnSL7ZCg)
(warning: NSFW, gore, German humour)

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
Staplerfahrer Klaus will never got old for me.

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cracell
Here's a German video
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nuVuEz0S16c](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nuVuEz0S16c)
of the system in action.

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ekianjo
In the meantime in Japan we have automatic parking buildings using robots for
like... 15 years or something. Lifting the cars up to store it vertically with
minimum waste of space.

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jpatokal
Not quite the same thing: those require purpose-built garages with car lifts
etc, while this can be easily(?) retrofitted into any old garage.

Japanese-style automated garages:
[http://romaxparking.com/resources.html](http://romaxparking.com/resources.html)
(videos below the fold)

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hyperliner
I assume it knows it is "your car" by the location where it dropped it, not by
reading license plates or some other form of id. This would make moving cars
around a little trickier, though I guess you could always keep the latest
location.

I wonder if it optimizes for your return. This is, if a person is not
returning until 5 days from now, maybe that car can be moved farther out in
the parking lot to make room for cars of people who are returning "soon."

Basically, all cars would be placed "far away" and then slowly move to the
front.

Maybe it's a "small" airport and this is not needed.

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jdmichal
At 6MPH and, I'm assuming, a non-trivial time for even "loading" and
"unloading" a car, I would not be at all surprised that the total time it
would spend reracking cars would end up being significantly longer than just
leaving them where they are and taking the extra time to fetch them.

~~~
hyperliner
Yeah, particularly if humans also park in the same spaces. I thought after
posting that if the robot knows a space is available far away, then maybe by
the time it gets there the space is taken by a human! :-)

I can envision tons of opportunities to mess with this robot.

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jeffdavis
The next step is to lift the vehicles high enough to go on shelves.

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toomuchtodo
Internal combustion vehicles can't be stored vertically, due to the engine oil
migrating throughout the engine. Electric vehicles can be.

[http://www.technovelgy.com/graphics/content07/robot-
garage-i...](http://www.technovelgy.com/graphics/content07/robot-garage-
irobot.jpg)

~~~
bri3d
There's still the matter of all the owner's crap in the car, and current EVs
would need nearly as much engineering as ICE vehicles to sit vertically
anyway.

For example, the Model S still has brake fluid, washer fluid, coolant, and
transmission oil, all which are stored in conventional automotive containers
and which would absolutely perform abnormally if the car were raised to
vertical.

I also suspect the transaxle has open breathers which would drain oil in the
vertical position.

EVs do contain far fewer moving parts and reduce drivetrain complexity over
ICE cars, but in every production EV design I've seen you only save one fluid
(engine oil). Tesla just hide the car's fluids from their owners by putting
plastic covers over everything but the washer fluid and then demanding you
take the car to an "annual service."

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joezydeco
Ahhh crap. I was returning a rental car at DUS a few days ago and saw this
very setup. My son wanted to hang around and watch a car get lifted and I
decided to move on.

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jonmrodriguez
Next time it wouldn't hurt to share your son's wonder and just enjoy such
amazing aspects of the world!

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joezydeco
Oh I was curious too: the whole area is lit up like Tron and painted with
racing stripes all over it, in the bottom floor of this large, dark concrete
garage. It was really cool.

However, it was late (22:00) and there were just no cars checking in at the
time. I had a mental note to find a YouTube video and then this link popped
up... =)

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ulfw
If they charge a premium for it, why not let a human do it and call it
'valet'?

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ejr
A human would need to enter the vehicle, which some may not comfortable with.
Also, the system may be more reliable than some of the valets I've seen.

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ulfw
Yea but at one point we need to figure out what to do with our lower-educated
part of society. Not everyone can become a programmer. And once we kill all
blue collar jobs and replace them by either robots or self-service, then
what's left for humans to do?

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ejr
I don't believe these people should be marginalised to menial or tedious jobs
with little appreciation and a pittance as pay. Essentially to render them
invisible to the larger operation of society. This might be hopelessly naïve
on my part, but I believe they can be just as productive in a different
capacity.

Trade schools and apprenticeships can greatly reduce the burden society must
endure in order to level the field for non-skilled labour. I don't believe
white and blue colour jobs need such a strong line dividing them and so I'm
sure new avenues for selling services or exchanging things of value and
different definitions of _what_ we value will emerge.

Of course, this is now getting into an area outside the scope of - and much
complicated than - a robot parking system ;-)

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cstross
_I believe they can be just as productive in a different capacity._

1\. [Cynically] the unemployed _are_ productive, as a discipline/threat to the
employed -- "do as we tell you or you will end up unemployed" [with long list
of implicit penalties].

2\. The whole idea that humans _must_ work to live is a weird cognitive bias
in western political discourse. If you look at actual employment rates they
max out around 40% -- children and pensioners don't have paid employment,
homemakers aren't paid for their labour, many folks are only partially
employed. Yet our whole dialog around how to structure society is based on the
axiomatic supposition that full employment is some sort of religious
directive.

Wouldn't we be better off looking for more culturally nuanced ways to measure
human value than mere fiscal utility over time?

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shire
The next step is cars that can park themselves.

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kylec
The biggest advantage to self-driving cars that I see is that I can drive a
car into a city center, drop myself off, then have the car wander aimlessly
through the streets until I need to be picked up. The cost of the gas is
almost certainly cheaper than the cost to park would be.

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batbomb
The biggest advantage to self-driving cars is that you don't have to buy a
car, so the car doesn't wander aimlessly, it just picks somebody else up and
taxis them around.

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sokoloff
A car, as currently used, is not just a transport mechanism. It's also a
storage mechanism. (Umbrella, sunglasses, kids' car seats, emergency diapers,
emergency cash, emergency feminine products, OTC meds (ibuprofen, antacids,
etc), a reasonably secure place to keep my backpack if I don't want to carry
it, mints/candy, etc.)

Automating a taxi service doesn't 100% replace the utility of a personal car.

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tantalor
> Sensors in the station measure the dimensions of the vehicle.. The robot
> adjusts its arms to fit the new vehicle

I wonder whether they considered classifying the make/model of the car,
perhaps using a simple computer vision approach, and lookup the dimensions in
a database of known models.

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Sanddancer
That approach would require constant database updates as new makes/models come
out. Additionally, it wouldn't be able to handle vehicles that have been
customized with things like larger tires. Scanning every vehicle makes the
system much more set-and-forget.

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hyperliner
I was thinking this very thing. Once you decide to support all cars, then you
need to build in the smarts to automatically measure and the database of
models is no longer needed.

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wil421
$40 dollars a day or $5.50 an hour! I think will park my car myself. Most
valets cost half that with tip included.

How can a 1.2 million dollar be feasible when you can hire or even create a
valet company for fractions of the costs? I trust a human with my car over a
robot at this point in time.

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goodcanadian
Where do you live? There are plenty of places with expensive parking. Self
parking in Sydney hit $50 after 3 hours.

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xanderstrike
At LAX the economy lot is $12 a day. If you park at one of the FlyAways and
take the bus it's $4 a day.

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bhassel
This isn't really meant to compete with economy parking though, it is? Parking
nearer the terminal at LAX is apparently $30 a day.

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userbinator
_Chief executive Rupert Koch claims using the Ray can increase a parking
structure’s capacity by 40 percent._

I'm a bit doubtful about this, since the apparatus is wider than the (typical)
driver and would have to leave plenty of space between the cars it drops.

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huihe9849hjjgkg
Maybe they pack cars in five deep and then dig the cars out when required.
Also there doesn't need to be a gap for people to get in and out between cars.

~~~
electromagnetic
Parking spaces generally have about 2.5ft of extra space for door opening.
Airports often a bit more due to people carrying bags.

It's also the fact that a Smart car takes up the same space in a parking
garage as an original Hummer. I've been in a Costco parking lot where someone
in a Mini has parked over the line into the opposing space (overlapping on the
front not the sides). I drive an F150 so I pulled tight on him and bumped him
and the parking gear rolled me an inch away. I didn't grab much (I think it
was pop, water and hotdogs/burgers for a party) and got out while he was still
loading his car. I dropped my tailgate and started throwing the cases in (and
pushing against the tailgate) so that my truck rocked and hit his car. The guy
said "Hey buddy, you're hitting my car." I walk around, look at the fronts of
the vehicle, take a picture with my phone (my trucks a company vehicle so we
get targeted by all sorts of morons who think we punctured their tire) and I
said "I don't know, it looks like you hit me. I'm well within my space."

The TL;DR: to that was "People are idiots who can't park small cars in big
spaces" so I'm quite confident parking efficiency can be increased
dramatically by decreasing wasted parking space.

You can also presumably halve the amount of driving lanes required. If only 3
robots serve the entire complex there should be enough routes to never run
into them having to travel the same lane at once. That alone could likely
increase efficiency dramatically; if a lane is wide enough to drive in, it's
wide enough to park a car in, and by a guesstimate with no room between
vehicles you could likely pack 3 vehicles wide in the width of 2 driving
lanes.

You also mention packing the cars in. If the software has access to boarding
times, and return times then they could presumably pack vehicles in 5 deep or
more. You could have a parking space 10 vehicles deep, if you've got lane
access on either side you put the cars in ordered by arrival time. Row 1 gets
in at 3pm, row 2 gets in at 3:30pm, etc. and you just unload from the opposing
side.

If you made an entire parking lot structure accessible this way, you could
presumably increase parking efficiency well beyond a 50% increase with the
reduction of all driving lanes.

~~~
hueving
You are a bad person. Someone parking over a line does not give you a reason
to vandalize their vehicle.

~~~
electromagnetic
Yeah... I _vandalized_ their vehicle in that no damage whatsoever occurred
because it was stationary vehicles and these vehicles come with these
contraptions called "BUMPERS".

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warrenmiller
shouldn't moving a locked car set it's alarm off?

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hyperliner
I dont think the sensors would detect any movement unless a problem happened.
The wheels don't rotate and the movement does not seem to have acceleration
high enough to trigger the alarm. Many alarms today don't even get triggered
when the car is hit by a ball, for example.

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DigitalJack
The sound waves from my motorcycle sets them off pretty routinely in parking
lots or cars on parked on the street. humorous and oddly satisfying.

~~~
hyperliner
This is interesting (never had an annoying alarm)! Seems sound waves create
more disturbance for the sensor than an actual blunt impact which is localized
to a point on the body and possibly not transferred through the chassis to the
sensor.

