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Would you trust a robot to park your car? The question will confront New Yorkers in February as the city's first robotic parking opens in Chinatown. The technology has been successfully applied overseas, but the only other public robotic garage in the United States has been troublesome, dropping vehicles and trapping cars because of technical problems. Nonetheless, the developers of the Chinatown garage are confident with the technology and are counting on it to squeeze 67 cars in an apartment-building basement that would otherwise fit only 24, accomplished by removing a maneuver space normally required. A human-shaped robot won't be stepping into your car to drive it. Rather, the garage itself does the parking. The driver stops the car on a flat platform and gets out. The platform is lowered into the garage, and it is then transported to a vacant parking space by a computer-controlled device similar to an elevator that also runs sideways. There is no human supervision, but an attendant will be on hand to accept cash and explain the system to new users. Parking rates will be attracted about $400 monthly or $25 per day, according to Ari Milstein, the director of planning for Automation Parking Systems, which is the U.S. subsidiary of a German company. This company has built automated garages in several countries overseas and in the United States for residents of a Washington D.C. apartment building. |