How often have we dreamt of someone who could take over our tiresome chores? And what could be more of a drag than crawling around the tight bends of a concrete, multi-storeyed car park in search of that elusive parking space? At Dusseldorf Airport in Germany, a Robot Parking Assistant, by the name of Ray, will now take over that chore for you. The ‘device’ has been developed by a small Bavarian-based Artificial Intelligence outfit called Serva Transport Systems.
Busy travellers just drop their vehicle in a specially allocated bay. Ray sizes up the vehicle and slips its forklift-like prongs under the bodywork, before lifting the car a few centimetres off the ground and trundling off to park it. Ray can carry a car of up to three tons in weight. It is very adroit; it can spin on its axis, making it much more manoeuvrable than a car. This enables the rows of cars to be closer, which boosts car park capacity. The Robot can even be summoned and pre-booked using a telephone app. Ray can be retrofitted to an existing multi-storeyed parking facility. While inspecting a Ray prototype at the Hanover Trade Fair in April, German Chancellor Angela Merkel had asked a company executive sceptically, “You’re sure Ray will be able to find my car afterwards?”
Ray has provided that answer at Dusseldorf…and so far nobody’s vehicle has gone astray! This Robot Valet has plenty to keep it occupied 24x7, although the number of parking spaces for which it is responsible has been initially restricted to 260. Ray is not only a boon to drivers allergic to the rigours of locating a parking space, it promises to be a good earner for its owner
too. Car park operators can expect a revenue hike of at least 40 per cent – and more, if a new car park has been designed with Ray in mind. The engineers that designed Ray came up with a clever application when they installed it at Dusseldorf Airport. They linked the robotic system to a data bank, so that Ray ‘knows’ when a plane with a parked car owner aboard it has landed. The Robot can therefore retrieve the relevant car in good time and
have it ready for drive-off.
Though automated car parking is definitely here to stay, innovations like this can prove to be tricky: a driverless mono-rail people-mover at Dusseldorf Airport, the Sky Train, was initially
dogged by technical gremlins. The problems included frequent breakdowns and passengers stranded in cabins outside the terminal. Airport officials have confidence in Ray – they say that ‘he’ will not misbehave. As insurance, however, Ray is in the company of several cyber colleagues. If ’he’ fails, another will take his place.
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