Robotic Parking Garage shuts down, traps hundreds of cars
The Garden Street Garage in Hoboken, NJ is one of them new-fangled parking garages that eschews the inefficiencies of gates and ramps in favor of a robotic store-and-retrieval system. These facilities are wonders to behold in person and usually loved by their patrons, except when someone turns it off with their cars trapped inside.
Last week it happened at the Garden Street Garage when the city of Hoboken entered into a dispute with Robotic Parking, the owners of the software that run the garage. The city of Hoboken had police escort Robotic Parking employees from the garage a few days before the contract between the two parties was going to expire. Unfortunately, Hoboken didn't realize that its software license ran out after its contract with Robotic Parking expired and that the garage would, subsequently, just stop working.
Both sides went to court where it was settled that Hoboken would pay $5,500 for a new three-year software license, and the victimized patrons finally got their vehicles back.
[Source: Wired]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
WB233629 4:42PM (8/08/2006)
As the only person on this board who actually parks his car in this garage, I can say that the city really dropped the ball on this one. The city and Robotic were arguing over roughly $4500 a month. With 300 cars in the garage this broke down to approx. $13 per car, per month. (If my math is wrong forgive me) Instead of trapping our cars and paralizing a neighborhood where it is damn near impossible to park, pass the added cost onto us the consumer. There are many SL500, 645i and A8's and I promise no one would have had a problem paying an extra $13. It's great when political hothead's get in the way of people getting to work.
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DKB_SATX 5:15PM (8/08/2006)
Nice... an article I found on the re-opening of the garage says that the city will end up spending MORE every month by paying Robotic Parking for the software and paying another company to actually run the day-to-day operation than it would have paid Robotic Parking to continue operating the garage without interruption. Now there's a well-thought-out business decision. It reinforces my cynical view of politicians.
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Fabulo 5:27PM (8/08/2006)
"Robotic said they had put $10 million of research into developing the software. "
Is that software made out of gold? What does the software do? Rotate the cars in the carousel to bring a specific cell to the 'unload' level? Kinda like you rotate the closes at the dry cleaner? Wow. That a cool $10 well spent.
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Shadyman 6:03PM (8/08/2006)
@Fabulo:
No, it must turn them for maximum freshness, and makes sure it they don't go bad.
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Eric L. 6:13PM (8/08/2006)
Robots controlling society? Panic, for SKYNET is upon us!! =D =D
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K 6:47PM (8/08/2006)
was it Shelley who wrote:
'Look upon my indifference and despair, what good your car keys now?'
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Dennis H. Clarke 8:00AM (8/09/2006)
First, the “robot grabs cars” headlines are very funny. Even I find them so.
However, the press rarely gets the details correct. That’s what blogs are for.
Robotic Parking Systems didn't "spend $10 million" on the software. What I told the press was that the software had been "10 years plus" in development. In fact, in over 14 years of work, the actual investment overall was far greater than $10 million dollars as the software doesn't stand alone. It was developed in conjunction with and works, very specifically with, an amazing collection of innovatively used machinery. While almost everything in our garages is “off the shelf equipment,” each machine as assembled, operates independently under computer direction per our software programs and works on its own to do its particular job, yet works in complete coordination with every other piece of equipment and every machine in the garage, always “knowing” where every car is, who owns it and remains ready to and will present it back to its owner, on demand, within two to three minutes under normal conditions
Frankly, now having operated the Robotic Parking Systems garage at 916 Garden St. in Hoboken under fire, in the real world with real world demands, 24/7/365 for four years with less than 30 hours total down-time in those four years, we can unequivocally state that it works very well indeed. We ran it at a 99.9% plus efficiency rating over those four years. It’s grooved in and has been proven more than workable as version 1.0.
That garage is the 90s version with 90s design and equipment and software. You should see the new ones with car washes built in.
The average conventional parking garage in the country is down due to what are usually called "police incidents" (murders, rapes, muggings, gun battles, fires, burglaries, malicious damage, people driving off the roof, suicides and other deaths in the garages, etc.) for more time each year than our garage in Hoboken was down in four years. We have not and will never have such incidents in one of our garages. All cars are safe and there are no people in our garages.
Next, it wasn't the license dispute that held cars in the garage. The garage was turned over to the City in pristine and working order. But somehow, “operator error” has apparently shut the garage down repeatedly since the City took it over.
Apparently, some "experts," competitors of ours, apparently sold the City on the idea that running the garage would be a piece of cake, even with no preparation. They have tried, and so far, in less than two weeks, the garage has been down for more time than in four years.
So now, with the Garage out of service for more hours than in its entire history, someone must be blamed The four operators who replaced our four operators are responsible but blame us. I would guess that the patrons of the garage are not exactly happy about that and will see to it that the City officials are just as pleased as they are. We will see.
Now there is the matter of a software license. The City apparently thought that their license to use our proprietary software was in effect. It wasn't. We offered them a choice of new license terms: In perpetuity, for ten years or for five years at a time. We all finally agreed to license for three years.
That should settle that. The City now has a license to use the software to operate the garage for the next three years.
This rings us to the matter of the use of one of our competitors to run the garage and turning our proprietary over to them to use. This raises other issues which are still under discussion.
However, as fun as the headlines are about "robots eating cars," it is only a competitor of ours, brought in by the city as a "low bidder," who has actually been eating people's cars and then complaining that we didn't leave them better instructions or something. That’s even funnier than the current headlines. Well, we didn't know they were coming in and wouldn't have trained them anyway. The competition of course will try to get people to blame us.
So, the patrons or taxpayers will have to pay much more than they would have had to pay for us to continue to operate the garage and do it 99.9% better.
To error is so very human. Such is life.
Dennis H. Clarke, COO
Robotic Parking Services, Inc
Clearwater Florida, USA
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