Nowadays it is a major challenge to find a perfect parking space in cities, especially in a busy area like markets, railway station or at the airport. The trouble further increases when you are in a hurry to board a flight or watch a movie in the theater.
To tackle such parking issues, a robot has been developed by a company based in Grabenstätt Bavaria, known as Serva transport system that can park the cars for the owners in tight spaces in the parking lot. The robot has been named as ‘Ray” and will be seen solving the problem for drivers who require bigger space as their parallel parking skill is not so good. Though there are other automated parking systems available, the developers of Ray claims it to be more efficient than the others.
The bot is already operating at the Düsseldorf International Airport. Moreover, in comparison to human drivers, the robotic assisted parking enable 60 percent more cars to be parked in the same parking area, thus saving room for additional cars.
The makers of the technology have kept the system simple for driver convenience. The driver can vacate their vehicles at Vehicle Transfer Station (VTS), where a laser scanner evaluates the width and height of the vehicle to be parked. VTS then measure the wheel position and other parts such as bumper and wing mirrors of the vehicle. After completion of this procedure, the VTS system issue a parking ticket to the driver of the vehicle, and the car is left for parking by Ray.
Ray is equipped with four wheels capable of rotating in complete 360 degrees and which enable the robot to navigate easily even in tight spaces. To lift the vehicle ray approaches from the side and slowly slide its fork under the vehicles, one set of fork sliding under the front and the other under the rear wheels. Following this, the car is carried to the spot as directed by the software of the system.
The software intelligently divides the given area of the parking lot to make best use of the space like by placing the vehicle of the same size and shape together. The parked cars can be rearranged any time if the Ray software identifies a better arrangement plan to efficiently use the space. And when the driver desires to get their vehicle back they simply need to return the issued ticket and the vehicle arrives at the VTS. Additionally, there is a smartphone app that informs the drivers if their vehicle is ready to be fetched from the parking.
According to managing director, Dr Christian Jahncke, at SITA Airport IT, the technology is extremely beneficial during peak times. And instead of making an arrangement for extra parking space, Ray helps in making the best possible use of the available space by aptly accumulating more cars in the given space than before. This technology seems promising saving time of drivers who faces difficulty in parking tight spaces and avert risk of dent that the car bears due to spatially-challenged drivers.
Source: Dailymail
