So I'll have to park my car in a garage first, then take a bus to the terminal just so that a robot can move my car from the place where I parked it to a different place? I was hoping it'd be something where I'd pull up to the curb, grab my bags and head in while the robot parked the car for me but apparently I'll still have to take a bus to the terminal?
simonklee 1 days ago [-]
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.
telesilla 1 days ago [-]
Sometimes airport parking is insanely expensive (cough Schipol), so I'll park further away anyway or park somewhere I can get the train. If this helped lower costs I'd be fine with this but probably they'd keep the high price anyway.
nextos 1 days ago [-]
Gatwick long-term parking is not expensive if you book in advance. You need to take a slow bus shuttle to the terminal, but it's never more than 15-20 min including waiting time. I've used it a zillion times as I'd rather not give my keys to those meet & greet companies who drive your car 5 miles. It might void insurance and waiting times when you return tend to be over an hour.
blitzar 1 days ago [-]
I'd rather not give my keys to those meet & greet companies who thrash your car for you while you are on holiday.
Yeah, I heard some horror stories a few years back. Trustpilot and Google reviews had some interesting cases.
myegorov 1 days ago [-]
Fun fact: you can get to/from Schiphol by bike.
crote 21 hours ago [-]
Practical fact: Schiphol is built literally on top of one of the busiest train stations in the country.
Virtually all major cities have a direct rail connection to it, with frequencies from 2x / hour all the way up to 10x / hour. No direct connection? There's probably a one-transfer option running 4x / hour.
It's a five-minute walk from the train platform to the check-in desks. It is closer than the taxi stands or the parking shuttle. It is definitely cheaper than them as well. Level boarding is increasingly common, so there's a good chance you can just roll your luggage onto the train. The trains are generally clean and safe, homeless people and drug addicts on the train are incredibly rare.
If you visit The Netherlands, don't bother exploring other forms of transport until you are absolutely certain that rail transport is impossible. You'll just be wasting money and making things needlessly difficult for yourself.
usrnm 1 days ago [-]
Some time ago I would've considered that a joke, but this year NS has been about as reliable as DB, so I might actually consider that option
Etheryte 1 days ago [-]
I mean, you can get to and from practically any airport by bike if you're determined enough.
eptcyka 1 days ago [-]
World of difference between using cycling infrastructure and sharing roads with 2 ton beasts powered by paleo compost.
skrebbel 1 days ago [-]
Sure but to Schiphol (and any other airport in NL obviously) there's a proper bicycle lane.
masklinn 5 hours ago [-]
And Schiphol has ov-fiets and bike garages.
holoduke 1 days ago [-]
There are bicycle lanes everywhere in Holland. I don't know a single person that bikes to the airport. From Amsterdam its at least 30 minutes by bike from the city center. Actually have no idea where I would park the bike. It's not common and not practical at this point.
Symbiote 14 hours ago [-]
I've cycled to Copenhagen Airport. A friend who lives about 15 minutes away (by bike) presumably cycles there when she flies for short meetings with just a backpack.
juleiie 1 days ago [-]
Unless the bike has electric engine and cargo compartment it’s not super viable id say to move all that luggage
aequitas 1 days ago [-]
Maybe that’s why the “elektrische bakfiets” (electrified cargo bike) is really popular here in the Netherlands. I’ve got one and don’t even live anywhere near an airport, closest one is at least an hour by car.
juleiie 1 days ago [-]
What about a sudden rainstorm on a bike? Or a heatwave without AC?
The way I see it sure you can go everywhere using a less than ideal transport option and manage if you must. But.. why?
yurishimo 1 days ago [-]
The Dutch have a saying, “Je bent niet van suiker” which means “You’re not made of sugar.”
Rain here is a fact of life, similar to the UK or Vancouver, Orlando or the Amazon Rainforest. Everyone who uses a bike for transportation here has a good rain jacket. And to put things in perspective, the normal rain seen in the Netherlands is more of a light drizzle and it generally comes in fits and spurts as moist air is pushed inland from the ocean. If you can afford to wait an hour, the rain is probably stopped.
Also, getting to the airport with a bike in the Netherlands is fine! There are nice protected bicycle lanes, a nice parking garage, good connections to neighboring infrastructure and you can always bring your bike down to the train platform if you need to go a bit further. When you live in a country that prioritizes cycling infrastructure, taking a bike is the practical, cheapest, and often fastest way to reach your destination.
Now to end on a point of more agreement, I agree with you that the demonization of AC in much of Europe is silly. Nobody is upset that in Bangkok or Tokyo that every building has AC. For some reason a certain type of European just doesn’t want to adapt and they will fight tooth and nail to prevent others from utilizing their own economic means in order to stay comfortable in their own homes. My home has solar panels and during the summer they produce much more power than I can utilize at one given moment anyway so if I want to run my AC at 400W during the peak heatwave that should be of no concern to anyone.
annzabelle 23 hours ago [-]
English actually has the exact same saying "You're not made of sugar, you won't melt."
A lot of people in car dependent regions have forgotten that you can dress for the weather, and that people have been traveling in all sorts of weather for hundreds of thousands of years.
Also, I think some of it is that decent parts of North America are vulnerable to heavy thunderstorms with hail and possible tornadoes, which are very different from the drizzle that Vancouver and Seattle get.
Aaargh20318 1 days ago [-]
Like any Dutch mom would say to their kids complaining about cycling in bad weather: you’re not made of sugar are you? (Meaning: you won’t melt due to a bit of rain, quit being a pussy).
crote 22 hours ago [-]
What about a unicorn shitting a rainbow onto your head?
The problem with "but sometimes..." arguments is that the "sometimes" rarely happens. For example, at www.hetregentbijnanooit.nl someone tracked how often it rained during their daily commute of 2x 45 minutes of cycling. Over an 11-year period, 90.3% of the commutes were dry - and that number would be even higher for people with a shorter commute, or those willing to wait a few minutes for the current rain squall to pass. Invest $100 in a luxury rain coat and the problem is solved.
Besides, in a country like The Netherlands the car is the less than ideal transport option! It is expensive, you keep getting stuck in traffic, you have to search for an available parking space, you can't park right at the door of your destination, and so on. For intra-city people movement, a bike is almost always the most convenient option.
Does it sometimes suck? Yeah, of course, but it sure beats getting stuck in traffic every single day.
juleiie 9 hours ago [-]
Well i don’t really care. I can use the superior mode of transport so why i would not?
Humanity invented engine you don’t need to use legs like a peasant. You can enjoy the fruits of civilisation
masklinn 5 hours ago [-]
You know, you could have saved everybody a lot of time if you'd honestly told everyone "but I don't wanna" from the start.
juleiie 4 hours ago [-]
I could but it wouldn’t be as entertaining in my opinion as having a prolonged exchange about such interesting problems and approaches to them.
Do we really owe anyone decrease in our comfort? Is there any reason to do so?
It isn’t a trivial question.
I might have crossed the line from thought provoking to offensive but in my defense it is an easy line to cross
Grombobulous 1 days ago [-]
You’re right, it’s not ideal. That’s why people in the Netherlands invented a special technology to compensate, which they call “clothes.”
Clothes are not really an ideal solution compared to surrounding yourself with a 4,000 pound piece of machinery that costs $50,000, loses half its value in 3 years, and degrades your mental and physical health.
juleiie 1 days ago [-]
Honestly avoiding people on the street improves my mental and physical health by reducing chronic cortisol. These fuckers stare at you and worse. A day of this and i am an anxious wreck.
It’s better to just get in your tanklet. Your little oasis. Home away from home.
That’s how i move nowadays from most point As to Bs. Music, AC, glasses. Perfect privacy. Calmness. Peace.
Kilograms of metal between you and the vicious, antagonistic reality of 2026 AD
It’s not just a car. It is an armor for the times like these.
Grombobulous 23 hours ago [-]
lol, I can't tell if your comment is satire. Home of the brave, right? Where people looking at you is considered scary?
I'm a lot more scared of car crashes, since in most years they kill more people in the US than firearms do [1], and that's a pretty morbid statistic considering 58% of firearm deaths are suicides. [2] In other words, all those bullets flying at you as you walk down the street are less than half as deadly as driving in your vehicle.
I would encourage you to look in your local newspaper/news website and see how often someone loses their teenager in a car crash versus how often someone loses their teenager to violence on the street. I didn't lose any classmates to violence, but I lost at least one classmate to a car crash.
Here's another exercise: stand at a sidewalk at a traffic light intersection and count how many people in cars are actively on their phones.
The most statistically dangerous thing that happens to people walking is being hit by cars.
Somehow I doubt the Dutch are staring at each other with violent eyes and wishing they could cower away from the sidewalk into the safety of their RAM 1500 Crew Cabs. I struggle to imagine how that would happen: you can't even stare at people as you ride by them in the bike lanes in the Netherlands, the cyclists are going way too fast for that.
I think a lot of it is that the US doesn't take a paternalistic approach to mental healthcare or addiction treatment, so there are a lot of junkies and people with psychosis out on the streets in many cities. My understanding is that in Europe these people are more likely to be receiving some kind of treatment and be living in supported housing of some kind, whether mandatory or not, where in a lot of the US they are ranting and raving on the streets and on public transit. But, it's their freedom to refuse shelter and to refuse treatment (and our freedom to choose not to fund it).
20 hours ago [-]
DonHopkins 17 hours ago [-]
The therapy that Juleiie needs begins with watching nine minutes of harmonious mixed car, bike, and pedestrian rush hour traffic at the intersection of Korte Prinsengracht and Haarlemmerstraat in Amsterdam.
Watching that video soothes my mind and warms my heart: thousands of people who have not Repo Man-style driven themselves unintelligent and insane manage to negotiate the same shared space simply by looking at one another in the eye, and acknowledging that everyone else exists.
The famous Dutch traffic engineer Hans Monderman believed drivers become more alert and cautious when there’s more uncertainty on the road.
Want fewer car accidents? Remove traffic signals and road signs:
>Hans Monderman believed that societies could make roads safer by making drivers more uncertain, and therefore alert.
>“When you treat people like idiots, they’ll behave like idiots.”
>That was the philosophy of Hans Monderman, the Dutch traffic engineer who became famous not for what he added to road design and urban planning, but for what he removed: curbs, traffic signals, signs. He believed drivers become more alert and cautious when there’s more uncertainty on the road.
>“The trouble with traffic engineers is that when there’s a problem with a road, they always try to add something,” Monderman said to Wired. “To my mind, it’s much better to remove things.”
>According to the anthropologist James C. Scott, Monderman began with the observation that:
>when an electrical failure incapacitated traffic lights, the result was improved flow rather than congestion. As an experiment, he replaced the busiest traffic-light intersection in Drachten, handling 22,000 cars a day, with a traffic circle, an extended cycle path, and a pedestrian area. In the two years following . . . the number of accidents plummeted to only two, compared with thirty-six crashes in the four years prior. Traffic moves more briskly through the intersection when all drivers know they must be alert and use their common sense, while backups and the road rage associated with them have virtually disappeared. Monderman likened it to skaters in a crowded ice rink who manage successfully to tailor their movements to those of the other skaters. He also believed that an excess of signage led drivers to take their eyes off the road, and actually contributed to making junctions less safe.
Unexpected interview in Groningen (Homage to Hans Monderman):
>What? You know all about transport in cities and you have never heard of Groningen? Well, check out this an unexpected street interview in Groningen, a slice of life as lived by our old friend and transport innovating colleague Robert Stussi. He has titled it: A Homage to Hans Monderman. Hear, hear!
Hans Monderman: Rethinking the design of streets and public space:
>An Urban Design London and Urban Design Group Lecture
>Hans Monderman has been one of the most significant influences on the current debate about the design of streets and spaces in the UK. A traffic engineer and road safety specialist from Northern Holland, he is celebrated as the pioneer of shared space as a means to influence speed and driver behaviour.
>Monderman has been the inspiration behind scores of towns and villages which work without road markings, traffic signs, signals, kerbs, barriers and bollards. ‘Most engineers, when faced with a problem, try to add something,’ he says. ‘My instinct has always been to take something away.’
>Following a short introduction by Rob Cowan, Hans explains his approach, work and experiences.
I don’t know why it feels like this but the modern world doesn’t feel like a safe place with sane people around us.
I would rather take my chances on the road than on the sidewalk or on a bus, completely exposed and defenseless. Like a girl from certain bus video.
You mentioned yourself that you can even be hit by a car. Many such cases lately of people driving car into groups of people.
This world is mad and i think you are much crazier than me. It’s one thing to feel it and do something, anything in response. It’s another to pretend like nothing is happening.
Grombobulous 23 hours ago [-]
I won't literally ask where you live where you feel this way as I don't need you to reveal personal info about yourself, but I truly believe that if you feel this way and you don't live in some kind of extreme outlier crime-laden area, you might want to seriously think about talking to a therapist.
This level of fear you describe is not a healthy or reasonable way to live your life and is not a very typical sentiment. A professional can help you figure out where these feelings are coming from and what you can do to manage them.
Sure, there are crazy and violent people out there, I don't deny that.
I know I was being somewhat of an urbanist zealot in my last comment, but for real...regardless of whether you prefer suburbs and spending more time in your car or the city and spending more time on foot, this isn't a healthy way for you to see the world in either case.
juleiie 22 hours ago [-]
These feelings are coming from being stared at. I can manage them by staring at people back in not so pleasant ways and having a weapon in a pocket if the staring contest escalates.
Grombobulous 20 hours ago [-]
Every major city I’ve ever lived in or visited mostly involved people doing the exact opposite of staring because urban culture generally has a “leave everyone else alone and mind your own business” aspect to it.
Because of that observation, I think it would be wise for you to dig deep on whether something about your own perceptions is failing you in this regard. I think there’s a strong likelihood that either something about your physical appearance looks very different, your own behavior is causing staring, or the staring isn’t happening at all in the way you describe.
Unless you just live in a specific place/culture where staring is prevalent.
juleiie 9 hours ago [-]
It’s not my business to make sure people aren’t staring. It’s your business to keep your eyes where they belong - straight ahead.
vidarh 7 hours ago [-]
I would urge you to seek help, as this attitude is not exactly indicating sound mental health.
juleiie 4 hours ago [-]
It sure isn’t. I am an artist really at the core and I need to be little unhinged to create.
Of course I am not saying everyone should be crazy but it is what works for me.
crote 21 hours ago [-]
How do you know those people aren't staring at you because you started staring at them in an unpleasant way in response to them randomly glancing a look vaguely in your direction?
I don't stare at people. They don't stare at me either. Problem solved?
juleiie 9 hours ago [-]
I check if people are looking at me. It’s useful and sometimes they do. Then we are locked in staring at each other like two cats.
DonHopkins 16 hours ago [-]
> staring at people back in not so pleasant ways and having a weapon in a pocket if the staring contest escalates
"Staring at people back in not so pleasant ways" IS escalating. Just like complaining about the traffic while driving means YOU ARE the traffic you're complaining about.
So you're intentionally causing traffic, escalating aggression, and increasing your chances of killing people with both your car and your gun, while also increasing your probability to 35 TIMES MORE LIKELY that you die by suicide by your own gun.
Not a wise strategy for someone who already admits to suffering from mental health problems so bad that you're afraid to look your fellow Americans in the eye. Threatening to murder someone because of a staring contest is totally unhinged, especially with your intentional escalation strategy.
My advice: get a bike and get rid of the gun. Don't just leave it around where children can get ahold of it. Destroy it.
But don't just destroy the gun and lose the car and get a bike: get professional help too. Crazy people murder innocent people with their cars all the time too, like what just happened at Berlin Pride.
Handgun ownership associated with much higher suicide risk:
>Men who own handguns are eight times more likely to die of gun suicides than men who don't own handguns, and women who own handguns are 35 times more likely than women who don't.
juleiie 9 hours ago [-]
Nice baseless assumptions based on random chain of comments.
DonHopkins 16 hours ago [-]
Well maybe if you Americans would stop glorifying Rolling Coal on bicyclists and pedestrians and electric cars, and electing narcissistic leaders who classify bike lanes as "Woke" DEI and are so racist and bigoted that they believe pedestrians and bicyclists and "Woke" and "AntiFa" citizens are radical terrorists who threaten their way of life, you wouldn't be so frightened to walk outside or look anyone in the eye.
Trump Secretary Puts Americans in Danger Over “DEI Bike Lanes”. Sean Duffy has derided bike lanes as too woke, and is now stripping mentions of them from federal websites:
Late 2021 in Waller County Texas, the teenage son of a well connected local family rolled coal on six cyclists and crashed into them causing serious injuries. There was police inaction (looked like a bit of a coverup) and then the DA filed felony charges. Since 2021, pretty much total silence in the news.
Very little information has been put out on this terrible crash since it happened in 2021, but recently I finally found some. And the article seems to show the driver was given little accountability. It's an interesting article, read & update. Including a discussion on the history of corruption in the Waller Texas area.
The Horrific Coal-Rolling Incident that Nearly Killed 6 Cyclists
IN A RURAL COMMUNITY OUTSIDE HOUSTON, A VIOLENT COLLISION SHATTERED LIVES. A TEENAGE BOY WAS CHARGED WITH ASSAULT, BUT WAS JUSTICE SERVED?
> Honestly avoiding people on the street improves my mental and physical health by reducing chronic cortisol. These fuckers stare at you and worse.
... you do realize that you are also "these fuckers", right? It's like complaining about "being stuck in traffic": no, you are the traffic.
The people on the street are just people. They aren't any different from your coworkers, your family members, or the parents of your kid's classmates. If merely being in the presence of other people causes you serious anxiety, you might want to consider asking a medical expert for potential therapy options before it gets even worse and you're left unable to leave the home at all.
juleiie 9 hours ago [-]
We are totally not the same in ways you could never fully comprehend
masklinn 1 days ago [-]
Depends how much luggage exactly, but bakfiets and cargo trailers can be pretty roomy. Ebike is always helpful.
And that's before you get into tricycles.
DonHopkins 16 hours ago [-]
I love seeing the delighted expressions on kids’ and dogs’ faces riding in bakfietsen.
skrebbel 1 days ago [-]
I've biked to the airport lots of times. It depends on where you're going of but for short-ish trips a backpack is often though. And I did also once bring a suitcase on a (non electric) cargo bike. Worked fine.
gib444 1 days ago [-]
Great way to save some CO2! It really pays to be conscious about that.
crusty 22 hours ago [-]
It's solving the 'meatsack labor costs are really cramping my profitability' problem.
It's an inconveniently located valet service. But oh, you keep your keys. So it's really an inconvenient tow-truck valet service - or two guys with fork lifts.
amelius 1 days ago [-]
It's still an impressive engineering feat, and (probably, given recent AI advances) an incredible time to market. I wonder when they started working on this, how big their company is, how much training data they put into it, etc.
What is the name of the company that built this?
wildzzz 1 days ago [-]
It's probably got some AI but not the GPU gobbling kind. This is old school robotics using control loops and old AI algorithms. Sensors decide if you've parked correctly in the garage. Robot is dispatched via a queue once you've closed the door. Cameras and sensors guide the dolly into place. Robot follows predetermined route to the parking spot and uses sensors to detect obstructions (people, debris, other robots parking cars). Maybe there's lidar on board. Cameras and encoders guide the car perfectly into the designated spot. Robot whisks off to go charge or grab another car from the queue. It's effectively the same level of intelligence as a Roomba with the mechanics of an electric forklift. It's still cool but the fundamentals were developed 40+ years ago, we've just managed to shrink a lot of the tech down in size and power since then.
semiquaver 1 days ago [-]
> (probably, given recent AI advances) an incredible time to market
There’s nothing whatsoever to indicate that this has anything at all to do with LLMs.
Ah, that answers something I was wondering about that the article didn't answer, which is how you can lift a car by its tyres without starting already under the tyre and without friction or forcing them to rotate.
Looks like the answer is (at least for this older system), come in from both sides of the tyre with two separate arms, and have each of those arms have their own little wheels on, so as you move inwards it lifts up the tyre and just rolls your mini wheels a little bit. Clever.
bwblabs 1 days ago [-]
This is the video of the 11+ year old system installed in Århus Denmark by Lödige Industries from Germany.
Lödige Industries more recent solution is actually moving the whole pallet you park on, so you can also plug your car into it: https://youtu.be/-_ZxnDrfwGk?t=46
The system in London Gatwick UK is done by Stanley Robotics from France (which was acquired by HL Robotics from South Korea in 2024), but it could be similar.
Nition 1 days ago [-]
Sorry yeah, I understood that they're not the same company or system, but I couldn't think of any way it could be done (aside from, as you say, parking already on it) so it was nice to see at least one solution.
mschuster91 1 days ago [-]
> how much training data they put into it
This kind of stuff has been the norm literally for decades in any major harbor. No AI BS needed.
kkrkgbbsvjdlzn 1 days ago [-]
We had AI in the 80/90s, we even had an AI hype in the 80/90s.
shermantanktop 1 days ago [-]
The things we called AI back then would not get that label today. Maybe “decision tree” or “expert system”? Or simply “algorithm”?
w4der 1 days ago [-]
And I bet even current LLMs will get relabeled as not-AI once the next best thing comes around in a decade or less.
wat10000 1 days ago [-]
Isn't this just automated valet parking? Valet parking allows more efficient use of space, which makes it cheaper in places where space is at a premium. Automating it would change that tradeoff in a way that benefits the customer.
bravoetch 1 days ago [-]
It's missing the value-add of valet parking - being able to pull up at the front door and walk away from your car. Without that, this is not valet anything. You still park then shuttle to the airport so there's zero benefit to the end user.
myself248 1 days ago [-]
On the other hand, it leaves the car locked the whole time, no valet having your keys, no valet adjusting your seats, etc. Some of us avoid valet for some of these reasons.
If this thing could pick up my car from curbside at arrivals dropoff like a valet, but handle it robotically so there's no valet downside, it would be amazing.
grogenaut 1 days ago [-]
on the other other hand it randomly pressure points the bottom of your car on points that weren't really meant for it.
agree that this would be way better if you just drove up in a queue and cars were taken away. one imagines the slow moving conveyors at amusement parks to get people closer to the ride's speed, tho given how long people take to park, get, take off the seat belt, find park, shut off the car, check their faces in the mirror, Find their cell, button their jacket, straighten up other stuff, find the rest of their shit, get out of the car, kiss their loved ones for 10 straight minutes, struggle with the tailgate, get their bats out, realize they forgot their phone, and finally head away from their car... probbably wouldn't work.
I see people take 5 minutes to get their car moving or get out at a grocery store. what they're doing I'll never guess. Car isn't even started for 3 minutes. When I first learned to drive my dad's hard and fast rule was to get the A/C running before anything else (other than insuring the car wouldn't move), the windows could be lowered with your other hand as a secondary.
myself248 23 hours ago [-]
It lifts the tires by scooping them up wheel-dolly style.
Machines precisely like this, but manually piloted, are used in automotive plants themselves to move vehicles that fail end-of-line test, had an assembly mishap affecting the powertrain, or otherwise need to be shuffled around when they're not able to move under their own power. As long as it has tires, it can be moved this way.
Stringo™ and DJ CarCaddy™ are some popular brands, if you want to see more of how this type of lift works.
grogenaut 16 hours ago [-]
Aah I didn't se that on the video that makes sense..
clort 1 days ago [-]
it picks it up by the tyres, so no random pressure points
pbhjpbhj 21 hours ago [-]
Also great for stealing cars, presumably.
wat10000 1 days ago [-]
In some places, it's no more convenient, and the value-add is just that you can pack cars in tighter. In Manhattan, for example, it's common for valet parking to be cheaper and less convenient.
varispeed 1 days ago [-]
I look for most spacious parking place with wide approach lanes, then shortest distance. Some car parks at the airports are just ridiculous. So narrow you can't exit the car.
kkrkgbbsvjdlzn 1 days ago [-]
I you have an extreme size SUV, yes, it should be hard to park. It’s by design.
close04 1 days ago [-]
I have a small car (regular hatchback) and a lot of the parking spots in the very large airport in my city are just marginally wider than my car. If you can’t get the spot at the end of the row, the only way to park in some of the buildings is to offload all your passengers, hope you find a spot where you can park “right door to right door” next to someone else so you can leave just enough room on the left side to squeeze out.
The parking buildings were built when cars were smaller than small cars today, and as the passenger count increased, so did the need for more spots, in a 0 sum game. They just split the cake in smaller slices.
varispeed 1 days ago [-]
I don't have a SUV. But why it should be hard? Do you hate people?
clickety_clack 1 days ago [-]
Implementation is everything. If there’s enough capacity to drive up and drop your car off without queueing, and your car is ready to go as you leave the terminal then it sounds great. If there’s a half hour wait to get into the drop off zone, and another half hour wait after picking up your bags, and a half hour walk to the pickup/dropoff area then I’d prefer a 30 min shuttle.
ohyayno 1 days ago [-]
[flagged]
birdsongs 1 days ago [-]
Do you have any proof of this? The moderators are very transparent here. I'd be absolutely shocked if that's true.
iamben 1 days ago [-]
I think this is solving the 'airport parking' problem my dad has. He drives to the airport, parks a mile or so away in some field and the company that owns the field drops him off at the terminal. He can leave his car there for the week.
This feels like a clever solution to have some spaces closer to the airport and many spaces further away.
scoot 1 days ago [-]
That isn't how this works. It doesn't transport your car to a more distant car park - it simply "parks" your car in an available space.
iamben 23 hours ago [-]
Yes. I read the article. You leave your car in a close and available garage so you don't have to search for a space. The robot takes your car and finds you a parking space to leave it.
What about my comment was wrong? At some point my dad gets to park his car in a garage close to the airport, a robot deals with it. At that point what does it matter if the space is 30 seconds from the garage or 5 miles?
have_faith 1 days ago [-]
Article says one of the terminals is within walking distance
IshKebab 1 days ago [-]
Anything is within walking distance if you're willing to walk...
Turn on satellite view and you can see it is on the edge of the long stay parking. I dunno if you're realistically going to save a lot of time unless your parking space is right at the back of the long stay car park. Worth it if it's free! I assume it's overpriced though.
crusty 21 hours ago [-]
I love (/s) that there's a Cafe business that can survive on a singular customer base of people who parked their cars for a long time in one very specific parking lot.
That's almost certainly where the shuttle bus goes from, and there are people waiting for the bus.
kkotak 1 days ago [-]
From the map. It looks like the train is closer to the terminal :)
arjie 23 hours ago [-]
From London proper, it's best to take the train to the airports. If you're lucky you're flying out of London City Airport, but most of the time I'd go to Gatwick or Heathrow by train and it's a good way to get there.
IshKebab 1 days ago [-]
Yes if you can get a train into a UK airport that's definitely the way, but even in the train-friendly UK that's often not feasible. For example Bristol airport has no railway. Heathrow is very inaccessible by train from the west. So there are unfortunately still plenty of reasons to drive to UK airports.
pbhjpbhj 20 hours ago [-]
Bus to Bristol Temple Meads (railway station) used to be pretty good. Bristol now charge cars £8.50 (for 5mins) to use the drop zone. This means lots of cars dangerously trying to set-down/pick up passengers in the busy main roads outside the airport. The government should step in; passengers should have a drop zone they can safely walk into the terminal from.
IshKebab 9 hours ago [-]
The secret is that you can drop/collect people at the silver parking zone for free, and there's a shuttle to the airport which is quite frequent and short.
But I agree, trying to extract money from people like this is greedy and dangerous.
My experience of the airport flyer has not been at all good.
kkrkgbbsvjdlzn 1 days ago [-]
[flagged]
dom96 1 days ago [-]
Meanwhile their toilets are all completely down because of water supply failures[1]. A sad and funny juxtaposition.
Yes, it doesn't make a lot of sense if you can't pull up close to the terminal and leave your car there for the robot to park. But I assume this is just a prototype/trial of the robot tech with a view to expanding it in the future. Presumably they didn't want the risk of broken down (or stuck/confused) parking robots clogging up the busy airport drop off area.
mattlutze 1 days ago [-]
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.
atmosx 1 days ago [-]
Well that’s the design / usability / real needs part. Which is what these projects often miss. I see often tech replacing parts of a workflow but in reality the process / flow remains the same. Now some parts are digital and we call this “progress”. Strictly speaking it’s digitization but not progress.
ghm2199 1 days ago [-]
Not a problem for me, :) I always take a shuttle or an Uber to the airport from where I parked, which is 10-15 mins away, because parking at the airport(JFK, LaGuardia, Newark at least) is stupid expensive
The article says:
> The facility is within walking distance of the South Terminal, although a free shuttle bus is also available.
1 days ago [-]
the__alchemist 1 days ago [-]
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.
That's if you know the system, and are aware that you won't find spots on the lower levels, and that the "x spots open" indicators are lying. If you're new, you can spend 30+ minutes on a goose chase, miss your flight etc.
This solves that problem; not the bus one. (If the drop-off location is easy to access; if not, then it's pointless)
Reason077 1 days ago [-]
> "you won't find spots on the lower levels, ... the "x spots open" indicators are lying"
A simpler and cheaper solution would be to fix those availability signs. Surely this is not a problem that a few cameras and some smart software couldn't solve.
iamtheworstdev 1 days ago [-]
Atlanta/Hartsfield just opened a new parking deck with those cameras and I bet some fancy as f### AI powered system. 7 level deck, I tried 4 of them before I realized the green/red lights were just randomly switching back in forth, so the total on each floor never reached zero. Fortunately, the top deck was free.
When I got back I walked past the kiosk that said "type in your license plate and locate your car" for those who forgot where they parked, like I did. Typed it in - no car found. (this was a recent trip, out on 07/23 and back on 07/25)
sarjann 1 days ago [-]
I guess the argument might be that it'll be faster than finding a spot. Slightly minor benefit is you don't need to remember where it's parked.
INTPenis 1 days ago [-]
It's basically a larger version of P-Snurran they made in Stockholm back in 2023. It was like a CD changer for cars.
globular-toast 1 days ago [-]
It's more like valet parking except you lock your car and keep your keys. I guess enough people don't trust someone else driving their car.
mcfedr 1 days ago [-]
especially disappointing as there is valet parking at Gatwick that works exactly like that
It’s exciting to invest in the future and not exciting to invest in infrastructure
joe463369 1 days ago [-]
Neither VINCI Airports nor Stanley Robotics are responsible for the water infrastructure in South East England.
longsangstan 1 days ago [-]
I am quite surprised by the amount of negative comments here. My immediate reaction after watching the video is that this is pretty cool and I want to try it, even though I expect issues given that it is the first service of this kind in London.
Tade0 1 days ago [-]
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.
forgetfreeman 23 hours ago [-]
Replacing "hand over your keys" with "perform detailed inspection of your vehicle, including undercarriage and suspension for damage before leaving" doesn't sound particularly enticing. Given I'm capable of parking my own vehicle without having an anxiety attack in the process I'm also fairly certain this thing doesn't solve any of my problems. I am likewise surprised that this seemingly pointless, grossly overengineered system that is nakedly hostile to minimum wage tier workers like valet service drivers isn't being warmly received here, but for different reasons.
PaulRobinson 1 days ago [-]
As a general rule, you should take the train to Gatwick if you can, but this is reasonably priced and next time I'm flying from Gatwick I'll probably drive and do this - the train route for me is a bit fiddly, and the worst bit of any London airport for a local is long-stay parking. I'm much closer to Heathrow but the flights from LGW are so much cheaper, it more than covers two weeks of parking at this price.
djhworld 1 days ago [-]
I always wonder with solutions like these how stuff like alarm systems on the car cope with the car being lifted, the vibrations encountered as its being towed.
Unless they tell you to switch the alarm system off I guess.
fsuts 3 hours ago [-]
Illegally parked Cars are regularly lifted up and put into the back of flatbed lorries or towed away on back two wheels so this is arguably more gentle!
0x3f 1 days ago [-]
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.
walrus01 1 days ago [-]
Car alarms go off all the time on ferries from cars that really don't like being locked and moved.
0x3f 1 days ago [-]
Ferries tilt and jolt in a way that predictable-path car lifts don't.
kvirani 1 days ago [-]
Yes I see this all the time on BC ferries. Usually an Audi or similar
papercrane 1 days ago [-]
The problem will be aftermarket car alarms. There used to be a car that parked on the street near my apartment that would go off ever time a bus went by it.
eliseumds 1 days ago [-]
Some OEM systems are sensitive too. My mother has a Hyundai that triggers the alarm whenever a heavy truck drives by.
Pretty sure the alarm cares more about tilt than vibration - indicates towing
saghm 1 days ago [-]
I asked this once in the past, but...do car alarms actually stop any actual crime ever? My entire life, every time I've ever heard a car alarm go off, literally everyone around just rolls their eyes and ignores it. If I actually looked up at a car alarm and the person outside the car just said "I'm so sorry! You know how it is", I would probably just nod and move on without really taking the time to figure out if it was really their car (because even if they were breaking in I don't have any desire to risk an altercation with someone doing that, and even if I were inclined to call law enforcement, I'm pretty sure they wouldn't come do anything because some random car's alarm is going off).
I want to be open minded that I'm missing something, but I can't help but feel like car alarms are just security theater with a side of nose pollution.
Traster 7 hours ago [-]
Having been to Gatwick plenty of times, the weakness with this vs the already existing valet parking is that the valet parking is just 1 story of the short stay car park.
You just drive up, drop your keys and go, your car is parked in a long line of cars that they can asynchronously drive off to long stay. The key thing is the location - you're a 30 second walk over a bridge into the terminal. Probably a hundred cars can be sitting waiting to be driven off to the long stay at the time, so they can handle the drop off/pick up of many cars at once. Whereas with this solution each "bay" will be occupied for a time while the autonomous robot drives off the previous vehicle, so you either need to over-provision - have many robots servicing a single bay to cope with peak times, or you'll need some local skid buffer.
From a customer point of view. This is on the outskirts of the airport so it's a much longer walk without a covered path (so you'll get wet because at some point it will start raining again in the UK). It's maybe slightly better than long stay, where you do need a bus journey (which tbh isn't that bad). But I'm not sure how much juice is in this application to squeeze.
peder 4 hours ago [-]
Presumably this robotic valet will shift more towards long-term parking distant from the airport when it's known a customer is not returning. Today that's presumably cost ineffective.
ajay-b 1 days ago [-]
"Unlike traditional valet parking, passengers retain possession of their keys throughout their trip."
"If passengers accidentally leave an essential item in the vehicle after drop-off, on-site staff will be available to retrieve emergency items."
But.. how would they get that emergency item if they don't have the keys?
beejiu 1 days ago [-]
You give them the keys, then they go to the site to collect your item.
bravoetch 1 days ago [-]
They can turn your alarm off while they're fetching your pills.
mbreese 1 days ago [-]
I can remote lock/unlock my car from an app, so I’m guessing this is what they are thinking about.
chrisjj 13 hours ago [-]
Wouldn't that need the parked car to have internet?
cortesoft 1 days ago [-]
First thing I thought, too. Seems like mutually exclusive features.
walthamstow 1 days ago [-]
It's quite reasonably priced too (for airport parking), about £80 a week booking for September today. I paid that for short stay parking at Stansted earlier this summer.
tehwebguy 1 days ago [-]
Wow, who is subsidizing it?
throw2ih020 1 days ago [-]
London Gatwick is outside of London, so I assume land costs are low enough that a multi-story car park isn't too expensive.
0x3f 1 days ago [-]
Most 'London' airports are outside of London and they still charge a ton for parking. Captive audience. This one is unusually cheap, even for Gatwick.
Havoc 21 hours ago [-]
I very much doubt this robot is carting them up an incline to a multi story
7952 1 days ago [-]
Most of the long term parking is surface rather than multi storey.
hiitsmyaccount 1 days ago [-]
[dead]
sixQuarks 1 days ago [-]
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.
michaelt 1 days ago [-]
> 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.
Assume your car park is a grid of cars, 20 cars wide and 20 cars long, i.e. 400 parking spaces.
You make the entire first row drop-off/pick up points. With 20 pick up/drop off points you can have a lot of people dropping off or picking up at the same time. And you know pretty well when people will be picking up their cars, as you know their flight arrival details.
Assume your average airport parking customer parks for 5 days, that's 80 arrivals and 80 departures per day. Each of your 20 pick-up/drop-off points only needs to handle 4 pick-ups and 4 drop-offs per day. To me that sounds feasible.
sixQuarks 1 days ago [-]
Yeah, in theory, but this assumes a linear demand curve, whereas there may be periods where lots of people come to park at the same time.
Most airport parking lots have thousands of spots so you’d need a lot
michaelt 23 hours ago [-]
> there may be periods where lots of people come to park at the same time.
At least in my country, airports under-provision infrastructure and ask travellers to arrive 2-3 hours before their flights to make up for it. If a person has to queue for 10 minutes for a drop-off bay to become available, that's just the normal airport experience.
> Most airport parking lots have thousands of spots so you’d need a lot
My point is: If you've got space for a lot of parked cars, you've got space for a lot of drop-off bays. If you've got space to build a car park with thousands of spaces, you've got space to give it hundreds of pick-up spots.
Seems it's becoming all too frequent in Kent and Sussex
ukrulez 1 days ago [-]
More fun to spend millions on AI than fixing literal shit.
jryle70 1 days ago [-]
Even more fun to bash AI from the comfort of HN without knowing how much AI is being used, or at all, in this case.
smnscu 1 days ago [-]
I'd be curious how it handles someone parking poorly in that bay e.g. diagonally. Presumably those lines serve as a parking guide and the door won't close unless you park correctly.
throw2ih020 1 days ago [-]
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.
1 days ago [-]
alt227 1 days ago [-]
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.
wildzzz 1 days ago [-]
It sounds like the actual lot will be robots only as it mentions parking cars closer together to maximize capacity.
antihero 1 days ago [-]
I think the OP was talking about humans parking weirdly in the garage the robot picks them up from, not the car park itself—the car park itself is robot only (so they can jam cars together).
cespare 1 days ago [-]
The parent is wondering about parking in the bay, before the robot picks it up.
Elhana 1 days ago [-]
Robot = some 3rd world country guy driving in remotely
matthewpick 1 days ago [-]
You could pack the cars so close together that no one could get into them. Could be seen as a bit of a theft deterrent, although I’m sure the car park itself is pretty secure.
znkynz 1 days ago [-]
That's the value change right? You can park more densely as no one needs to get in our out of the vehicle.
amiga386 1 days ago [-]
Will it meet the same fate as the gimmicky Autosafe SkyPark that opened in 2001 and went bankrupt in 2003, and still had cars in it when the building was demolished nearly 20 years later?
Wonder what the actual limit is and what happens when you're above it (and the other max. dimensions)? Couple of EVs out there that are heavier than 2.6 tonnes now. (Volvo EX90, Mercedes EQS, BMW iX, Ioniq 9, Rivians (not yet in the UK), ... and many more right around that weight.)
Is it getting measured in the cabin and declines you?
clort 1 days ago [-]
Since you have to book in advance, I guess you give them the number plate details. They can look it up online to see what kind of vehicle it is and can decline to book if too heavy. They can cross check the number plate when you arrive.
lrae 1 days ago [-]
TIL you can just look up vehicle information via number plate in the UK.
Possible I guess, but what if you don't have UK plates?
Symbiote 13 hours ago [-]
That would be rare, they could just decline these bookings.
myself248 1 days ago [-]
I wonder how many people will forget to roll up their windows because they parked in a garage, then the robot leaves the car outside for a week, then the owner comes back to find the car back in the garage but inexplicably soggy and full of mold.
Does the process have a check for forgotten windows?
mjfisher 1 days ago [-]
In the UK, pretty much zero. Nobody ever leaves their windows down when they leave their car.
dybber 1 days ago [-]
Is parking with the windows open a normal thing to do in the UK?
hbcdbff 1 days ago [-]
I have never seen anyone ever park and leave their windows open. Ever
giobox 23 hours ago [-]
I almost never see it now, but twenty to thirty years ago when there where far more cars on UK roads with no air conditioning, you would very occasionally see someone leave the window slightly open to try and keep cabin temps a little more sane in summer. In the 90s/early 2000s there where a lot of cheap cars (Ford Fiestas, Corsas etc) sold in volume on UK roads with no AC, and on hot days those things would turn to ovens if parked in the sun with the windows up. I used to have to do this occasionally myself with a crap Ford Ka I owned with no AC. It was a pretty normal thing to do back then!
I'm not even sure if it's possible to even buy a new mass-produced car with no AC anymore in the UK, or pretty much anywhere else for that matter.
myself248 1 days ago [-]
In a garage?
nfbdhdfbf 1 days ago [-]
You didn’t answer the question Is that a thing people do in the UK? I’ve never heard of anybody doing that. I’m not sure why you would do it.
23 hours ago [-]
clort 1 days ago [-]
Unlikely to be normal, but I have been doing it at a couple of places I park at this year, since I'm there for a while, have to park in the sun and the places are semi-enclosed (ie, it is fenced so random people not walking around but not secure compound level). Also, my car is 17yrs old, I got it for free and don't keep valuable items inside. I prefer leaving the window open to coming back to 38degC inside. No aircon.
jen20 1 days ago [-]
In a garage or not, it's not a normal thing to do in the UK.
It's also not a _normal_ thing to do in the US, though I have heard some people do it in higher-crime cities to avoid the windows being broken.
userbinator 24 hours ago [-]
The US is huge. In hot dry rural areas it's also perfectly normal to park with the windows down to avoid the interior getting even hotter. (And theft is not really a concern.)
ThrowawayTestr 1 days ago [-]
What difference does that make?
kkrkgbbsvjdlzn 1 days ago [-]
Insurance.
torginus 22 hours ago [-]
My car rolls up the windows after a while if I leave it and lock it. I though pretty much all cards did.
It's not quite clear from the video but it looks to me like you park up in the garage, and there's a garage door on the other side. So as you 'check in', I guess the 'human' side you drove in on, that door closes, and then the other side opens for the robots to collect the car which I'm guessing is also where the car storage is.
Sort of feels like those videos you see of high tech warehouses where the human workers really only operate on the outskirts of the building, and everything central is completely automated (picking, sorting, storing, inventory etc)
jonplackett 1 days ago [-]
The reality of this is a lot less exciting than the headline implies.
23 hours ago [-]
oasisbob 1 days ago [-]
Just in case anyone else is wondering, that article mentions that you get to keep your keys no less than eight times, while being light on all other details.
I miss publications with skilled human editors.
artisinal 1 days ago [-]
Will probably not be long until a YouTuber tries to hide in their car while it gets picked up. Would make for a fun video.
Tom Scott perhaps? Though he will likely get full access to the system.
(The main difference being 3D in Japan and 2D at Gatwick)
pkulak 1 days ago [-]
I guess we can add this to the ever-growing list of extremely expensive, complicated, inefficient and convoluted solutions to problems that end with the final specification: "but it can't be a train".
ChrisMarshallNY 1 days ago [-]
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.
Yes, let's depend on a train for my time-sensitive journey with lots of awkward luggage.
Do you people even ride trains? Are you OK with the 50/50 odds of gettings home on time?
niltecedu 1 days ago [-]
Its gatwick, 3 lines go here, one every 15 minutes. I have always taken the train to either Heathrow or Gatwick, there's always been more than enough space to accomodate luggage, idk what people here are on about.
dymk 1 days ago [-]
A train system is a much safer bet than praying traffic won't be bad
sealeck 24 hours ago [-]
Trains are literally scheduled according to a timetable... traffic isn’t
Atlas667 1 days ago [-]
Took the south Florida brightline 3 times, recently, to get to the airport (+2 times for leisure travel) and it was pretty good.
Get there by rideshare in 20 mins, trains on time, 1hr to city, 10 min shuttle to airport. On time every time.
I moved my luggage by hand more WITHIN the airport than getting to the airport.
Would do it again
rsynnott 1 days ago [-]
I mean, it probably depends on the train line? Only airport train I’ve ever had issues with was Manchester, and more due to an absolutely ridiculous ticketing situation than anything else.
dyauspitr 1 days ago [-]
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.
scratcheee 1 days ago [-]
Easier to haul my luggage on a train designed for that purpose than take a car and spend longer parking it than the entire train journey. I live 10 minutes from Gatwick, have never driven there, and don’t understand why anyone would want to if there’s any alternative.
Taxis I understand.
glitchcrab 1 days ago [-]
Same, I also live very close to Gatwick, the train is about 4 stops for me and puts me right at the terminal. Zero reason to drive.
rpadovani 1 days ago [-]
My company pays for taxi from my door to the airport and I still take the train, unless I am leaving before dawn.
There is both a rational environment choice in that, and a nice feeling of being part of a humming crowd
dyauspitr 1 days ago [-]
I drive an EV powered by my own solar panels. I’ve done my part and frankly don’t much like public transport unless I’m specifically looking to be in the hubbub which is mostly on the weekends when I’m socializing.
scld 1 days ago [-]
....what part have you done???
dyauspitr 22 hours ago [-]
For the environment. I’ve done my part for the environment in the travel context. I travel without causing emissions or using any grid power.
louthy 1 days ago [-]
Presumably, you've never taken the Heathrow Express? That is a train journey that is always better than a car. The Gatwick Express, not so much.
rsynnott 1 days ago [-]
As far as I can see, the Gatwick express is mostly an excuse to rip people off. Last time I was there, there was a normal train to Victoria for about a third the price, which took literally two minutes longer. Is there a tourney for which the Gatwick express actually makes sense?
niltecedu 1 days ago [-]
For not being stuck at any shenanigans that might happen at East Croydon.
entech 1 days ago [-]
Doesn't have to be binary. Train is more efficient at moving large volume of people reliably compared to a bus or a taxi. I would wager that there are many more people travelling with carry-on only or a single bag for which train is more than adequate.
Gud 1 days ago [-]
I travel 40-50 times a year by flight and I absolutely don't mind taking the train.
I live in Zürich which has an excellent rail network.
lucb1e 1 days ago [-]
15 quid that it won't work without installing an app that could have been a website or a card swipe terminal
embedding-shape 1 days ago [-]
> The service must be booked in advance. Same-day drive-up parking is not available.
Interesting, I wonder if this is just a "Like to be able to see availability and cross-reference data to set individual pricing" or if it's because of a technical limitation, and if so, what could that possibly be?
dlopes7 1 days ago [-]
Well if there are 100 cars waiting in line for the little garage to be available it defeats the purpose
harvey9 1 days ago [-]
This seems like valet parking-like but drivers keep their keys. Possibly solving the untrustworthy valet problem, but unlikely to be price-competitve with the cheap off-site parking firms that usually get mentioned in the consumer problems columns.
OptionOfT 1 days ago [-]
This is interesting for the point of saving space. You need a lot less space between cars and can easily park multiple rows without having to leave egress space. All you then need to do is move 3 other cars.
Give a buffer that should be feasible.
flipbrad 1 days ago [-]
I wonder what the failure mode for something like this is (e.g. in bad weather, after a power cut, a car catches fire, etc). Nobody in the country with keys, cars parked so close together you probably couldn't get in anyway... could be interesting!
mschuster91 1 days ago [-]
> 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.
SoftTalker 1 days ago [-]
BEV thermal runaway fires are certainly not a solved problem. I'm not sure they are as common as some critics suggest, but they are difficult when they happen.
ifwinterco 1 days ago [-]
Even without BEVs a fire in a car park can easily result in the whole thing burning to the ground if you're not careful. It happened at Luton a few years ago, and I think in the end they worked out it was a diesel that started it.
You're right though, if every car is a BEV of unknown battery health left for a week+ packed bumper to bumper in a baking hot car park in the middle of summer, that would definitely be considerably worse
mschuster91 1 days ago [-]
> I'm not sure they are as common as some critics suggest, but they are difficult when they happen.
Indeed, and the usual solution that firefighters choose is to dump copious amounts of water onto the burning vehicle and then drown the carcass into even more water. The biggest issue is that it takes time for the firefighters to arrive - about 10 minutes in Germany by law - and so a fire has quite the time to progress.
simonbarker87 1 days ago [-]
Of all the airports to do it at in the UK this is probably the one that doesn’t need it. Parking at Gatwick is a breeze, lots of options close and far from the airport and quite reasonably priced. Now Luton, that’s another story.
beardyw 1 days ago [-]
I remember parking in central London where you left your car in a single space inside a building and it would whisk it up onto some unseen location. I think that was under human control but maybe it will make a comeback with automation.
krisoft 1 days ago [-]
There are some horror stories when those kind of systems break down.
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.
0x3f 1 days ago [-]
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.
tonyedgecombe 1 days ago [-]
I remember using one in Fleet Street in the eighties.
dgellow 1 days ago [-]
I never thought about this, can you steal cars by lifting them like that in the air? Not that I think that will happen, but it would be really funny to hack such a robot and just collect cars around
jameshart 1 days ago [-]
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.
There are systems where you park your car on a moving platform and the whole platform slots into an underground warehouse. That seems simpler and safer.
dybber 1 days ago [-]
I don’t think they’re mechanically simpler. Those kinds of underground garages probably require a lot of maintenance to keep running.
kioleanu 1 days ago [-]
Are these not the guys that ask like 7 pounds to drive up to kiss & fly? Good to see that money’s put to good use!
£7 is about the price of a pint. Surely that’s worth it given the convenience of driving right up to the front door of the terminal?
kioleanu 1 days ago [-]
I may be a socialist but being able to bring your heavy luggage to the door of the place you already pay a fee to be at (airport taxes) should be free, no? Like in all other parts of Europe
And they say, oh, no, you can come for free if you’re willing to walk 15 minutes to the terminal. No, that’s greed plain and simple.
Gud 1 days ago [-]
Not everyone takes the car.
Why should people who don't deem it necessary to take a personal vehicle to one of the most expensive locations on the planet(city airport) subsidize those who do?
kioleanu 1 days ago [-]
What exactly would be subsidized by the people taking the train if the people driving up to (not parking at!) the airport wouldn’t pay a fee?
Gud 9 hours ago [-]
The roads at the airport?
With that said, at Zürich airport, you do have ~5 minutes before there's a charge which I find reasonable.
ryanmcbride 1 days ago [-]
Wow finally something capable of parking cars! I'm sure it'll be so much better and cheaper than just paying valets to do it too!
reenorap 1 days ago [-]
The cookie screen for this web site is the most deceitful I’ve come across in a long time. How do I report this?
parking was the one part of the airport experience that wasn't broken. naturally, that's what they fixed first.
trebligdivad 1 days ago [-]
I wonder what their secure parking area looks like.
krisoft 1 days ago [-]
A fenced off flat parking lot with a few cameras here and there. Not sure what you expect.
trebligdivad 1 days ago [-]
Well that's why I ask - a lot of 'secure' airport parking suffers from people stealing from it.
jq-r 1 days ago [-]
Honest question, what there is to steal from a car what was left on the parking lot? Especially on an airport where I assume everyone flies off with their luggage and leave nothing or nothing of value behind.
trebligdivad 1 days ago [-]
The car.
krisoft 1 days ago [-]
I wouldn't think that should be a problem here if there is any sanity how the system is implemented. With a normal (short stay, long stay) parking lot it is expected that cars leave all the time. A thief breaking into your car and driving off with it, and you getting into your car and driving off with it looks almost the same visually.
Here cars normally leave by a robot picking it up and depositing the vehicle in a garage. Probably there is a vehicle entrance to the parking area for maintenance, but it would be weird to see a car leave through that. Similarly thiefs could cut a hole in the fence and drive through that but again, visually very distinct from a normal operation. Of course it still doesn't help if the security is in on it, but it would be easier to notice that things are askew for a competent security.
So that leaves us with the thieves somehow confusing the digital systems so it dispenses the car to the thieves. And that very much depends on the security of their digital systems.
Hence why I think it would be hard to secure a normal parking lot even when operated competently. But this has the potential if implemented well, to be much more secure.
chedabob 1 days ago [-]
I agree with you, but given that a lot of car theft is now done by exploiting the keyless entry system, it feels like there'd be easier targets.
trebligdivad 1 days ago [-]
They are different opportunities for thieves; airport parking has an advantage that the owners are expected to be away for a while, and, if someone is involved in the parking then they know they may be away for lets say 2 weeks. So then the thief thinks if they can steal the car soon after they arrive no one will notice for ~2 weeks by which time it's in a container on the otherside of the world.
So is it that normal looking parking area or is that a multi storey behind the places they show in the video?
stronglikedan 1 days ago [-]
If you knew what it looked like, it wouldn't be as secure!
mfldkjgkfl 1 days ago [-]
In what way is this better than an uber?
tene80i 1 days ago [-]
Price, depending on how far away you live.
jauntywundrkind 1 days ago [-]
A sci-fi dream i have is that cars and their engines decouple. That you just own a shell, an egg, and the town owns all the engines. (This dream also includes warehouses and delivery robots of many sizes owned by the town too).
In a funny way, this sort of does that. Sure your car still has an engine but this very much is the car-shell tractor, in practice. This is really neat to see.
I wish them luck. I hope it is reliable enough! It looks pretty straightforwards in how it picks up wheels, which is neat.
pj_mukh 1 days ago [-]
Great, now let's (gradually) get rid of all surface parking lots and build hyper-optimized multi-floor parking setups not made for human driving. A sort of Ocado Grocery Warehouse [1] for cars.
As far as I understand, first one Ocado robot went on fire, it doesn't have a sensor for fire so it kept going. Neither do its neighbours, who pass right by it and catch fire themselves. And so it keeps going until everything is on fire.
fortran77 1 days ago [-]
The video didn't show how it actually gets under your t[y|i]res and then gets out from under your tires when it's moved it.
Onavo 1 days ago [-]
Can it handle EVs safely? The bottom battery often causes...issues if you don't have a lifting puck to spread the weight.
Finnucane 1 days ago [-]
So robots: yes. Water: no.
blondie9x 1 days ago [-]
This is so unnecessary. Just make better transit options and make it more affordable for people to go to airport.
ukrulez 1 days ago [-]
Why even go to the airport? Take the train to where you are going.
varispeed 1 days ago [-]
I heard horror stories, where "secure storage area" was actually a field without any security. Not saying this is the case here, but one must be mad to give a car like that without knowing exact location it is going.
It's one of the things where I can't see what is there robot's role here.
djhworld 1 days ago [-]
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.
varispeed 1 days ago [-]
My guess is they take the car away from the drop off point to employee pick up point and human drives them away to the "secure location".
txomon 1 days ago [-]
Am I the only one bothered because the license plate masking they have used is so bad that you can see the License plate whole several times?
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nttylock 1 days ago [-]
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Rendered at 21:20:09 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
https://news.sky.com/story/i-paid-numerous-fines-after-leavi...
Virtually all major cities have a direct rail connection to it, with frequencies from 2x / hour all the way up to 10x / hour. No direct connection? There's probably a one-transfer option running 4x / hour.
It's a five-minute walk from the train platform to the check-in desks. It is closer than the taxi stands or the parking shuttle. It is definitely cheaper than them as well. Level boarding is increasingly common, so there's a good chance you can just roll your luggage onto the train. The trains are generally clean and safe, homeless people and drug addicts on the train are incredibly rare.
If you visit The Netherlands, don't bother exploring other forms of transport until you are absolutely certain that rail transport is impossible. You'll just be wasting money and making things needlessly difficult for yourself.
The way I see it sure you can go everywhere using a less than ideal transport option and manage if you must. But.. why?
Rain here is a fact of life, similar to the UK or Vancouver, Orlando or the Amazon Rainforest. Everyone who uses a bike for transportation here has a good rain jacket. And to put things in perspective, the normal rain seen in the Netherlands is more of a light drizzle and it generally comes in fits and spurts as moist air is pushed inland from the ocean. If you can afford to wait an hour, the rain is probably stopped.
Also, getting to the airport with a bike in the Netherlands is fine! There are nice protected bicycle lanes, a nice parking garage, good connections to neighboring infrastructure and you can always bring your bike down to the train platform if you need to go a bit further. When you live in a country that prioritizes cycling infrastructure, taking a bike is the practical, cheapest, and often fastest way to reach your destination.
Now to end on a point of more agreement, I agree with you that the demonization of AC in much of Europe is silly. Nobody is upset that in Bangkok or Tokyo that every building has AC. For some reason a certain type of European just doesn’t want to adapt and they will fight tooth and nail to prevent others from utilizing their own economic means in order to stay comfortable in their own homes. My home has solar panels and during the summer they produce much more power than I can utilize at one given moment anyway so if I want to run my AC at 400W during the peak heatwave that should be of no concern to anyone.
A lot of people in car dependent regions have forgotten that you can dress for the weather, and that people have been traveling in all sorts of weather for hundreds of thousands of years.
Also, I think some of it is that decent parts of North America are vulnerable to heavy thunderstorms with hail and possible tornadoes, which are very different from the drizzle that Vancouver and Seattle get.
The problem with "but sometimes..." arguments is that the "sometimes" rarely happens. For example, at www.hetregentbijnanooit.nl someone tracked how often it rained during their daily commute of 2x 45 minutes of cycling. Over an 11-year period, 90.3% of the commutes were dry - and that number would be even higher for people with a shorter commute, or those willing to wait a few minutes for the current rain squall to pass. Invest $100 in a luxury rain coat and the problem is solved.
Besides, in a country like The Netherlands the car is the less than ideal transport option! It is expensive, you keep getting stuck in traffic, you have to search for an available parking space, you can't park right at the door of your destination, and so on. For intra-city people movement, a bike is almost always the most convenient option.
Does it sometimes suck? Yeah, of course, but it sure beats getting stuck in traffic every single day.
Humanity invented engine you don’t need to use legs like a peasant. You can enjoy the fruits of civilisation
Do we really owe anyone decrease in our comfort? Is there any reason to do so?
It isn’t a trivial question.
I might have crossed the line from thought provoking to offensive but in my defense it is an easy line to cross
Clothes are not really an ideal solution compared to surrounding yourself with a 4,000 pound piece of machinery that costs $50,000, loses half its value in 3 years, and degrades your mental and physical health.
It’s better to just get in your tanklet. Your little oasis. Home away from home.
That’s how i move nowadays from most point As to Bs. Music, AC, glasses. Perfect privacy. Calmness. Peace.
Kilograms of metal between you and the vicious, antagonistic reality of 2026 AD
It’s not just a car. It is an armor for the times like these.
I'm a lot more scared of car crashes, since in most years they kill more people in the US than firearms do [1], and that's a pretty morbid statistic considering 58% of firearm deaths are suicides. [2] In other words, all those bullets flying at you as you walk down the street are less than half as deadly as driving in your vehicle.
I would encourage you to look in your local newspaper/news website and see how often someone loses their teenager in a car crash versus how often someone loses their teenager to violence on the street. I didn't lose any classmates to violence, but I lost at least one classmate to a car crash.
Here's another exercise: stand at a sidewalk at a traffic light intersection and count how many people in cars are actively on their phones.
The most statistically dangerous thing that happens to people walking is being hit by cars.
Somehow I doubt the Dutch are staring at each other with violent eyes and wishing they could cower away from the sidewalk into the safety of their RAM 1500 Crew Cabs. I struggle to imagine how that would happen: you can't even stare at people as you ride by them in the bike lanes in the Netherlands, the cyclists are going way too fast for that.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5642886/
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7988561/
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7670332/
[1] https://everytownresearch.org/graph/gun-death-vs-motor-vehic...
[2] https://publichealth.jhu.edu/2025/new-report-highlights-us-2...
Unbelievably busy bicycle crossing in Amsterdam:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pqQSwQLDIK8
Watching that video soothes my mind and warms my heart: thousands of people who have not Repo Man-style driven themselves unintelligent and insane manage to negotiate the same shared space simply by looking at one another in the eye, and acknowledging that everyone else exists.
The famous Dutch traffic engineer Hans Monderman believed drivers become more alert and cautious when there’s more uncertainty on the road.
Want fewer car accidents? Remove traffic signals and road signs:
https://bigthink.com/the-present/want-less-car-accidents-get...
>Hans Monderman believed that societies could make roads safer by making drivers more uncertain, and therefore alert.
>“When you treat people like idiots, they’ll behave like idiots.”
>That was the philosophy of Hans Monderman, the Dutch traffic engineer who became famous not for what he added to road design and urban planning, but for what he removed: curbs, traffic signals, signs. He believed drivers become more alert and cautious when there’s more uncertainty on the road.
>“The trouble with traffic engineers is that when there’s a problem with a road, they always try to add something,” Monderman said to Wired. “To my mind, it’s much better to remove things.”
>According to the anthropologist James C. Scott, Monderman began with the observation that:
>when an electrical failure incapacitated traffic lights, the result was improved flow rather than congestion. As an experiment, he replaced the busiest traffic-light intersection in Drachten, handling 22,000 cars a day, with a traffic circle, an extended cycle path, and a pedestrian area. In the two years following . . . the number of accidents plummeted to only two, compared with thirty-six crashes in the four years prior. Traffic moves more briskly through the intersection when all drivers know they must be alert and use their common sense, while backups and the road rage associated with them have virtually disappeared. Monderman likened it to skaters in a crowded ice rink who manage successfully to tailor their movements to those of the other skaters. He also believed that an excess of signage led drivers to take their eyes off the road, and actually contributed to making junctions less safe.
Unexpected interview in Groningen (Homage to Hans Monderman):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQASVz4xun8
>What? You know all about transport in cities and you have never heard of Groningen? Well, check out this an unexpected street interview in Groningen, a slice of life as lived by our old friend and transport innovating colleague Robert Stussi. He has titled it: A Homage to Hans Monderman. Hear, hear!
Hans Monderman: Rethinking the design of streets and public space:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bjBGokenEhQ
>An Urban Design London and Urban Design Group Lecture
>Hans Monderman has been one of the most significant influences on the current debate about the design of streets and spaces in the UK. A traffic engineer and road safety specialist from Northern Holland, he is celebrated as the pioneer of shared space as a means to influence speed and driver behaviour.
>Monderman has been the inspiration behind scores of towns and villages which work without road markings, traffic signs, signals, kerbs, barriers and bollards. ‘Most engineers, when faced with a problem, try to add something,’ he says. ‘My instinct has always been to take something away.’
>Following a short introduction by Rob Cowan, Hans explains his approach, work and experiences.
Hans Monderman talking about Shared Space:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2amDl1Hkl0w&list=PL83763C4BA...
I would rather take my chances on the road than on the sidewalk or on a bus, completely exposed and defenseless. Like a girl from certain bus video.
You mentioned yourself that you can even be hit by a car. Many such cases lately of people driving car into groups of people.
This world is mad and i think you are much crazier than me. It’s one thing to feel it and do something, anything in response. It’s another to pretend like nothing is happening.
This level of fear you describe is not a healthy or reasonable way to live your life and is not a very typical sentiment. A professional can help you figure out where these feelings are coming from and what you can do to manage them.
Sure, there are crazy and violent people out there, I don't deny that.
I know I was being somewhat of an urbanist zealot in my last comment, but for real...regardless of whether you prefer suburbs and spending more time in your car or the city and spending more time on foot, this isn't a healthy way for you to see the world in either case.
Because of that observation, I think it would be wise for you to dig deep on whether something about your own perceptions is failing you in this regard. I think there’s a strong likelihood that either something about your physical appearance looks very different, your own behavior is causing staring, or the staring isn’t happening at all in the way you describe.
Unless you just live in a specific place/culture where staring is prevalent.
Of course I am not saying everyone should be crazy but it is what works for me.
I don't stare at people. They don't stare at me either. Problem solved?
"Staring at people back in not so pleasant ways" IS escalating. Just like complaining about the traffic while driving means YOU ARE the traffic you're complaining about.
So you're intentionally causing traffic, escalating aggression, and increasing your chances of killing people with both your car and your gun, while also increasing your probability to 35 TIMES MORE LIKELY that you die by suicide by your own gun.
Not a wise strategy for someone who already admits to suffering from mental health problems so bad that you're afraid to look your fellow Americans in the eye. Threatening to murder someone because of a staring contest is totally unhinged, especially with your intentional escalation strategy.
My advice: get a bike and get rid of the gun. Don't just leave it around where children can get ahold of it. Destroy it.
But don't just destroy the gun and lose the car and get a bike: get professional help too. Crazy people murder innocent people with their cars all the time too, like what just happened at Berlin Pride.
Handgun ownership associated with much higher suicide risk:
https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2020/06/handgun-owner...
>Men who own handguns are eight times more likely to die of gun suicides than men who don't own handguns, and women who own handguns are 35 times more likely than women who don't.
Trump Secretary Puts Americans in Danger Over “DEI Bike Lanes”. Sean Duffy has derided bike lanes as too woke, and is now stripping mentions of them from federal websites:
https://www.reddit.com/r/transit/comments/1v4svzl/trump_secr...
ULTIMATE ROLLING COAL ON TESLA COMPILATION | TESLACAM STORIES #98
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sgT1Sjo6u34
Cycliq Fly6 CE and Fly12 CE – Coal Rolling in Daytona
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFeBKT8mNXc
Update on the Waller Texas teen who crashed into cyclists while rolling coal on them
https://www.reddit.com/r/cycling/comments/1efwnvp/update_on_...
Late 2021 in Waller County Texas, the teenage son of a well connected local family rolled coal on six cyclists and crashed into them causing serious injuries. There was police inaction (looked like a bit of a coverup) and then the DA filed felony charges. Since 2021, pretty much total silence in the news.
A reddit post in May 2023 here asking for information still comes up in a Google search and is one of the most recent, @ u/gmkrikey https://www.reddit.com/r/cycling/comments/13u9bxn/what_happe...
Very little information has been put out on this terrible crash since it happened in 2021, but recently I finally found some. And the article seems to show the driver was given little accountability. It's an interesting article, read & update. Including a discussion on the history of corruption in the Waller Texas area.
The Horrific Coal-Rolling Incident that Nearly Killed 6 Cyclists
IN A RURAL COMMUNITY OUTSIDE HOUSTON, A VIOLENT COLLISION SHATTERED LIVES. A TEENAGE BOY WAS CHARGED WITH ASSAULT, BUT WAS JUSTICE SERVED?
Original update, https://www.bicycling.com/news/a60747401/waller-texas-coal-r...
EDIT: added non paywall version, https://archive.ph/3tLtL
"The more you drive, the less intelligent you are." -Miller, Repo Man
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rwma-xGQa6o
... you do realize that you are also "these fuckers", right? It's like complaining about "being stuck in traffic": no, you are the traffic.
The people on the street are just people. They aren't any different from your coworkers, your family members, or the parents of your kid's classmates. If merely being in the presence of other people causes you serious anxiety, you might want to consider asking a medical expert for potential therapy options before it gets even worse and you're left unable to leave the home at all.
And that's before you get into tricycles.
It's an inconveniently located valet service. But oh, you keep your keys. So it's really an inconvenient tow-truck valet service - or two guys with fork lifts.
What is the name of the company that built this?
Edit: seems like they got bought out in 2024 by HL Robotics: https://en.hlrobotics.co.kr/
Looks like the answer is (at least for this older system), come in from both sides of the tyre with two separate arms, and have each of those arms have their own little wheels on, so as you move inwards it lifts up the tyre and just rolls your mini wheels a little bit. Clever.
The system in London Gatwick UK is done by Stanley Robotics from France (which was acquired by HL Robotics from South Korea in 2024), but it could be similar.
This kind of stuff has been the norm literally for decades in any major harbor. No AI BS needed.
If this thing could pick up my car from curbside at arrivals dropoff like a valet, but handle it robotically so there's no valet downside, it would be amazing.
agree that this would be way better if you just drove up in a queue and cars were taken away. one imagines the slow moving conveyors at amusement parks to get people closer to the ride's speed, tho given how long people take to park, get, take off the seat belt, find park, shut off the car, check their faces in the mirror, Find their cell, button their jacket, straighten up other stuff, find the rest of their shit, get out of the car, kiss their loved ones for 10 straight minutes, struggle with the tailgate, get their bats out, realize they forgot their phone, and finally head away from their car... probbably wouldn't work.
I see people take 5 minutes to get their car moving or get out at a grocery store. what they're doing I'll never guess. Car isn't even started for 3 minutes. When I first learned to drive my dad's hard and fast rule was to get the A/C running before anything else (other than insuring the car wouldn't move), the windows could be lowered with your other hand as a secondary.
Machines precisely like this, but manually piloted, are used in automotive plants themselves to move vehicles that fail end-of-line test, had an assembly mishap affecting the powertrain, or otherwise need to be shuffled around when they're not able to move under their own power. As long as it has tires, it can be moved this way.
Stringo™ and DJ CarCaddy™ are some popular brands, if you want to see more of how this type of lift works.
The parking buildings were built when cars were smaller than small cars today, and as the passenger count increased, so did the need for more spots, in a 0 sum game. They just split the cake in smaller slices.
This feels like a clever solution to have some spaces closer to the airport and many spaces further away.
What about my comment was wrong? At some point my dad gets to park his car in a garage close to the airport, a robot deals with it. At that point what does it matter if the space is 30 seconds from the garage or 5 miles?
Anyway here's where it is:
https://maps.app.goo.gl/YZKPXp7LSjc5jPot5
Turn on satellite view and you can see it is on the edge of the long stay parking. I dunno if you're realistically going to save a lot of time unless your parking space is right at the back of the long stay car park. Worth it if it's free! I assume it's overpriced though.
https://maps.app.goo.gl/wL9jK7Pnsc2Ezzp4A
But I agree, trying to extract money from people like this is greedy and dangerous.
My experience of the airport flyer has not been at all good.
1 - https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026/jul/26/water-supply...
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.
The article says:
> The facility is within walking distance of the South Terminal, although a free shuttle bus is also available.
That's if you know the system, and are aware that you won't find spots on the lower levels, and that the "x spots open" indicators are lying. If you're new, you can spend 30+ minutes on a goose chase, miss your flight etc.
This solves that problem; not the bus one. (If the drop-off location is easy to access; if not, then it's pointless)
A simpler and cheaper solution would be to fix those availability signs. Surely this is not a problem that a few cameras and some smart software couldn't solve.
When I got back I walked past the kiosk that said "type in your license plate and locate your car" for those who forgot where they parked, like I did. Typed it in - no car found. (this was a recent trip, out on 07/23 and back on 07/25)
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.
Unless they tell you to switch the alarm system off I guess.
I want to be open minded that I'm missing something, but I can't help but feel like car alarms are just security theater with a side of nose pollution.
You just drive up, drop your keys and go, your car is parked in a long line of cars that they can asynchronously drive off to long stay. The key thing is the location - you're a 30 second walk over a bridge into the terminal. Probably a hundred cars can be sitting waiting to be driven off to the long stay at the time, so they can handle the drop off/pick up of many cars at once. Whereas with this solution each "bay" will be occupied for a time while the autonomous robot drives off the previous vehicle, so you either need to over-provision - have many robots servicing a single bay to cope with peak times, or you'll need some local skid buffer.
From a customer point of view. This is on the outskirts of the airport so it's a much longer walk without a covered path (so you'll get wet because at some point it will start raining again in the UK). It's maybe slightly better than long stay, where you do need a bus journey (which tbh isn't that bad). But I'm not sure how much juice is in this application to squeeze.
"If passengers accidentally leave an essential item in the vehicle after drop-off, on-site staff will be available to retrieve emergency items."
But.. how would they get that emergency item if they don't have the keys?
Assume your car park is a grid of cars, 20 cars wide and 20 cars long, i.e. 400 parking spaces.
You make the entire first row drop-off/pick up points. With 20 pick up/drop off points you can have a lot of people dropping off or picking up at the same time. And you know pretty well when people will be picking up their cars, as you know their flight arrival details.
Assume your average airport parking customer parks for 5 days, that's 80 arrivals and 80 departures per day. Each of your 20 pick-up/drop-off points only needs to handle 4 pick-ups and 4 drop-offs per day. To me that sounds feasible.
Most airport parking lots have thousands of spots so you’d need a lot
At least in my country, airports under-provision infrastructure and ask travellers to arrive 2-3 hours before their flights to make up for it. If a person has to queue for 10 minutes for a drop-off bay to become available, that's just the normal airport experience.
> Most airport parking lots have thousands of spots so you’d need a lot
My point is: If you've got space for a lot of parked cars, you've got space for a lot of drop-off bays. If you've got space to build a car park with thousands of spaces, you've got space to give it hundreds of pick-up spots.
As long as you don't want to use the toilet.
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.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-edinburgh-east-fife-4...
Wonder what the actual limit is and what happens when you're above it (and the other max. dimensions)? Couple of EVs out there that are heavier than 2.6 tonnes now. (Volvo EX90, Mercedes EQS, BMW iX, Ioniq 9, Rivians (not yet in the UK), ... and many more right around that weight.)
Is it getting measured in the cabin and declines you?
Possible I guess, but what if you don't have UK plates?
Does the process have a check for forgotten windows?
I'm not even sure if it's possible to even buy a new mass-produced car with no AC anymore in the UK, or pretty much anywhere else for that matter.
It's also not a _normal_ thing to do in the US, though I have heard some people do it in higher-crime cities to avoid the windows being broken.
Sort of feels like those videos you see of high tech warehouses where the human workers really only operate on the outskirts of the building, and everything central is completely automated (picking, sorting, storing, inventory etc)
I miss publications with skilled human editors.
Tom Scott perhaps? Though he will likely get full access to the system.
(The main difference being 3D in Japan and 2D at Gatwick)
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.
https://www.gatwickexpress.com/how-were-performing/train-ser...
Do you people even ride trains? Are you OK with the 50/50 odds of gettings home on time?
Get there by rideshare in 20 mins, trains on time, 1hr to city, 10 min shuttle to airport. On time every time.
I moved my luggage by hand more WITHIN the airport than getting to the airport.
Would do it again
Taxis I understand.
There is both a rational environment choice in that, and a nice feeling of being part of a humming crowd
Interesting, I wonder if this is just a "Like to be able to see availability and cross-reference data to set individual pricing" or if it's because of a technical limitation, and if so, what could that possibly be?
Give a buffer that should be feasible.
That's a solved problem, drench the car in copious amounts of water and flush all oxygen with high pressure CO2 tanks.
You're right though, if every car is a BEV of unknown battery health left for a week+ packed bumper to bumper in a baking hot car park in the middle of summer, that would definitely be considerably worse
Indeed, and the usual solution that firefighters choose is to dump copious amounts of water onto the burning vehicle and then drown the carcass into even more water. The biggest issue is that it takes time for the firefighters to arrive - about 10 minutes in Germany by law - and so a fire has quite the time to progress.
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.
Just for most people a stolen locked car isn’t really of much uses.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c2lqd72d4lqo
And they say, oh, no, you can come for free if you’re willing to walk 15 minutes to the terminal. No, that’s greed plain and simple.
With that said, at Zürich airport, you do have ~5 minutes before there's a charge which I find reasonable.
How about we fix basic issue as a species first, before going all robots and AI and trips to Mars?
https://archive.ph/IrBH8#selection-575.0-575.61
Here cars normally leave by a robot picking it up and depositing the vehicle in a garage. Probably there is a vehicle entrance to the parking area for maintenance, but it would be weird to see a car leave through that. Similarly thiefs could cut a hole in the fence and drive through that but again, visually very distinct from a normal operation. Of course it still doesn't help if the security is in on it, but it would be easier to notice that things are askew for a competent security.
So that leaves us with the thieves somehow confusing the digital systems so it dispenses the car to the thieves. And that very much depends on the security of their digital systems.
Hence why I think it would be hard to secure a normal parking lot even when operated competently. But this has the potential if implemented well, to be much more secure.
In a funny way, this sort of does that. Sure your car still has an engine but this very much is the car-shell tractor, in practice. This is really neat to see.
I wish them luck. I hope it is reliable enough! It looks pretty straightforwards in how it picks up wheels, which is neat.
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ssZ_8cqfBlE
As always, yes I know this already exists in Japan.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EQQlREtqAM8
As far as I understand, first one Ocado robot went on fire, it doesn't have a sensor for fire so it kept going. Neither do its neighbours, who pass right by it and catch fire themselves. And so it keeps going until everything is on fire.
It's one of the things where I can't see what is there robot's role here.