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?
London Gatwick has launched a robotic airport parking service
21–30 of 285 posts
Re: London Gatwick has launched a robotic airport parking service
#22I wonder what their secure parking area looks like.
You can see it on Google maps: https://maps.app.goo.gl/MQjWHbbc5jeUryGU7?g_st=ic
Re: London Gatwick has launched a robotic airport parking service
#23Wow 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!
Re: London Gatwick has launched a robotic airport parking service
#24So 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?
Article says one of the terminals is within walking distance
Re: London Gatwick has launched a robotic airport parking service
#25I 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.
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.
Re: London Gatwick has launched a robotic airport parking service
#26I wonder what their secure parking area looks like.
A fenced off flat parking lot with a few cameras here and there. Not sure what you expect.
Re: London Gatwick has launched a robotic airport parking service
#27I 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!
Re: London Gatwick has launched a robotic airport parking service
#28It'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.
Wow, who is subsidizing it?
London Gatwick is outside of London, so I assume land costs are low enough that a multi-story car park isn't too expensive.
Re: London Gatwick has launched a robotic airport parking service
#29I'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.
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.
Re: London Gatwick has launched a robotic airport parking service
#30So 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?
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.
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?