There are new parking garages that exist today that don’t have human valets. Robots take your car from you and put it in a garage into a space too small and compact for humans to park in. This is really efficient for both space and energy because cars and robots don’t need light to operate, nor do they need excess space to walk around in.
The Dusseldorf airport in Germany already has robots parking cars for business people who are in a hurry and don’t want to spend any time looking for parking. The hourly rate is expensive, but it is one of the first garages of its kind. The price will only go down.
A startup in New Jersey called Boomerang is also attempting something very similar. Soon we may have parking garages all over the country that resemble the one in ‘I Robot‘. In any case, forget about parallel parking, we may not need to continue parking at all. It may be a little soon to expect these garages to start popping up all over, but now that we know it’s possible, how long will it take before big cities start adopting this trend?
With the crowding in cities, being able to squish more spaces into a parking garage would be a major advantage. As long as these robots don’t start thinking for themselves, it is a great idea.