South Korean car manufacturing giant Hyundai has developed an intriguing parking robot that can park your car better than any human valet ever could.
Car companies have invested billions of dollars into advanced automated parking solutions to relieve human drivers of the stress of parallel parking or backing up into tight spaces. Some systems have turned out better than others, but unless you’re willing to pay a fair bit extra for such an advanced system, you’re stuck with your own human parking skills. But what if there was a way to have your old or cheap car parked automatically without even having to keep the engine running? South Korean company Hyundai has developed an ingenious parking robot that can glide under virtually any kind of car, lift its wheels, and then park it perfectly in a designated parking spot.
With fully autonomous vehicles still a thing of the distant future, valets may have considered themselves safe from the robot revolution, but that’s just because most of them haven’t seen Hyundai’s WIA parking robot network in action. Unveiled last year, WIA consists of flat metal slabs no taller than 110 mm that are actually sleek robots that slide under vehicles of up to 2.2 tonnes, deploy pairs of metallic arms to lift all four wheels, and then park the car better than any human ever could.
Hyundai’s flat parking robots are equipped with cameras and LiDAR, and can move at 1.2 meters per second, working in tandem, like metal ballet dancers, to move cars into parking spaces. In its original demonstration, the South Korean developer said that QR codes make the robots’ job a lot easier, helping them pair each car with its designated parking space.
In less than a year since the unveiling of the WIA parking robot system, Hyundai has already implemented the system at its Seongsu office building in Seoul, as well as the Singapore Innovation Center, with videos of the metal slabs at work showing just how well it works. The company’s Smart Parking Control System can reportedly operate up to 50 robots simultaneously.
Interestingly, a very similar robot was showcased by Chinese company Shenzhen Shanyi Technologies, only that one was used to quickly lift illegally parked vehicles and free up streets and parking spaces much more effectively than tow trucks.
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