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Ray, Your Parking Robot
Having trouble finding a parking place? Having trouble parking? How about trying to find your car at the airport after a weeklong vacation? Ray, the parking robot, is here to help.
Ray is currently under test at Düsseldorf Airport in Germany.
(Ray the robot parks cars)
Ray has four wheels that can turn a full 360-degrees, allowing it to manoeuvre into extremely tight spaces.Approaching from the side, Ray picks up the car by sliding one set of its forks each under its front and rear wheels.
The car is then transported to the parking spot selected by the system’s software. When a driver wants their car back, they pay the ticket and their vehicle will be brought to a nearby VTS.
The technology has been developed by Serva transport systems, a company based in Grabenstätt Bavaria, alongside the Fraunhofer Institute for Material Flow and Logistics in Dortmund.
In his 1941 novel Methuselah's Children, Robert Heinlein wrote about an automated parking garage called a robopark:
Outside her friend's apartment [Mary] dropped down a bounce tube to the basement, claimed her car from the robopark, guided it up the ramp...
(Read more about Heinlein's robopark)
Perhaps readers can think of other science-fictional parking garages.
Via Daily Mail.
Scroll down for more stories in the same category. (Story submitted 6/25/2014)
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