where to park it

There's a great scene in the movie Clueless (loosely inspired by Jane Austen's Emma) where the main character, Cher, is practicing her driving skills with her pseudo-stepbrother (eventual love interest) in preparation for taking her driver's test. He asks if she wants to practice parallel parking, to which she airily responds, "What's the point? Every place  you go has valet." That's actually quite true in Los Angeles (where the film is set): sure, you can try to find on-street parking, and in some neighborhoods, you might even succeed. But chances are, every moderate to pricey bar or eatery provides valet parking services, often for quite a reasonable fee. ("Reasonable" is subjective, but I tend to weigh the cost of valet parking against the time wasted and ensuing aggravation of finding an on-street parking spot... that doesn't have a meter, therefore requiring spare pocket change.)

It's a different story in New York City, where I spent the last few days visiting pals and old favorite haunts (plus a few new ones, like the fabulous Cocoa Bar on the Lower East Side). Parking is in short supply, and you're going to pay premium prices for a space. Which is why most New Yorkers either walk or take cabs or public transport to get around, rather than drive; I certainly did when I lived in the Big Apple. In fact, many of my long-time New Yorker pals, especially Manhattanites, don't even have driver's licenses, never mind own cars. Nonetheless, some people insist of bringing their vehicles into the city and clogging up the streets as they drive around block after block looking for that magical open space on the street until, in desperation, they opt for the parking garage.

Parking is a $26 billion industry, and there's always more cars than there are spaces. So those invested in the business of parking are always on the lookout for any innovative new approach that will enable them to cram more cars into New York City's increasingly limited real estate space. That's why it was headline news when the Big Apple's very first automated parking garage, located on Baxter Street in Chinatown, made its debut several months ago. The developers are confident that they'll be able to squeeze some 67 cars into the basement under an apartment building that would otherwise fit only 24 cars. They managed it because the robotic parking technology enabled them to remove the ramp and maneuver space normally required to get vehicles in and out of the garage. It won't be cheap: about $400 per month, or $25 per day. But New Yorkers are used to those kinds of prices.

It's actually not a new idea. The very first Park-O-Mat opened on December 5, 1951, per this article in Wired, and like the Chinatown system, it used a revolving elevator-type contraption, with an attendant operating the system remotely. Earlier this year, there was an article in The New York Times by Phil Patton about the sudden surge of interest in such systems. The inspiration derives from vending machines, especially the automats that were first popularized in the 1950s. Volkswagen's Autostadt Center in Wolfburg, Germany, features an automated parking garage that looks like it stepped out of a sci-fi movie, and apparently a Boston-area architectural firm is designing a see-through automated garage for shared-car services like ZipCar. Their inspiration? The humble Pez dispenser. Pez: it's not just about the candy anymore.

The term "robotic parking garage" is a bit misleading, since it's not like a humanoid robot straight out of The Jetsons will be taking your car keys (and demanding a bigger tip). There is a human attendant to handle the financial transactions and explain the system to any clients, but the garage itself does the parking. The driver will pull the car onto a computer- controlled pallet, turn it off, and get out. The pallet is then lowered into the abyss of parking spaces, much like a freight elevator for cars, except it can also move sideways, not just up and down. There's an array of laser sensors that let the system know if the car doesn't fit on the pallet (although it's big enough to fit a mid-sized SUV), and also detects movement to make sure the driver and any passengers have left the car before the pallet begins to move.

The system retrieves the car when the driver returns, although this might take some time and creative maneuvering. Cars are parked two deep in some spots, so a specially tailored software system has to figure out the logistics of shuffling the various vehicles around as needed to retrieve a specific car. And for those, like me, who find it difficult to turn their vehicle around after pulling out of a space, there's an underground turntable that turns the car around before it is lifted to the surface, so the car is facing out into the driveway, ready to go. Backing out of garages or parking spaces is one of the most common causes of accidents.

Still, you have to wonder whether automating a parking garage doesn't open the door for other kinds of accidents. There's only one other operational robotic parking garage in the US, in New Jersey, and it's had a few technical glitches -- if you can call dropping a vehicle a "glitch." In 2004, the robot garage dropped a Cadillac Deville six floors; the next year, a Jeep met a similar fate, falling four stories. Then there was the time in 2006 when the system crashed for 26 hours, trapping all the cars inside. Fortunately, nobody was in the cars at the time, so there weren't injuries -- just a certain amount of aggravation and/or property damage. Ask the operators of the Joisey garage about it, and they'll call them "freak incidents." Supposedly, the latest generation of robotic parking garages uses vastly improved technology: software, machinery, and better laser and radar sensors.

If Australian architect Andrew Maynard has his way, it won't just be our parking garages that are automated in the future. Via Geoff Manaugh's BLDGBLOG, we learned that Maynard has launched a futuristic new project called Corb V2.0, a "speculative housing project that serves to update Le Corbusier's old idea of the house as a machine for living." Maynard envisions planned suburban developments with many tract "houses" (or, more accurately, stacked "living units") built on movable modules. A gigantic crane-like stacking machine, much like those used to stack cargo, will be programmed to re-arrange the various housing modules almost continually. The hypothetical crane would be able to move up, down, left, right, and could even  execute a 180 degree turn so the house would end up facing the opposite direction.

So residents would never know where they'd end up next: in a penthouse, in the basement, facing the sunset one day, and the sunrise the next. They might even find themselves on the other end of the block. Every day would be a new housing adventure. Personally, I think once the novelty wore off, it would be more irritating than inspiring. I like our 9th floor loft just where it is. But Maynard gets major points for innovative imagination. (Incidentally, if you're not already reading BLDGBLOG, why not? Check out this fabulous blog entry -- complete with photos -- of some guy in Sweden who has constructed his own mini, Manhattan-like metropolis inside his apartment, with some 50 "buildings" built entirely from salvaged materials.)

So, autonomous parking, and houses that automatically relocate -- can a fully automated car be far behind? Perhaps it's not yet a viable commercial product, but we're well on the way down that development path: higher-end vehicles already incorporate sophisticated driver assistance systems with auto parking, adaptive cruise control, and collision warnings. And earlier this year, computer scientists at Freie Universitat in Berlin unveiled their autonomous robotic mini-van called the Spirit of Berlin, which they developed in conjunction with the Berlin Police Department. It's controlled completely by computers, with no need for a human operator. The car can steer, brake and accelerate, and turn all its components off and on as needed. In a pinch, it can be driven manually, but where's the fun in that? The scientists hope to add further innovations that will enable the car to recognize and react to traffic signals and signs. 

The technology behind the Spirit of Berlin isn't just computers and software, but also a staggering number of sensors that work together to "recognize" pedestrians, cars, motorcycles, and so forth, augmented by special laser scanners installed on the car. The scanners cast their beams around the car (with a range of some 150 meters), and the sensors detect the light reflected back from objects in its proximity. By measuring how long it takes the reflecting laser beam to return, the sensors can figure out where things are located, and how close (or far) they are from the vehicle. Because any autonomous car is going to need to have a very accurate map of both stationary and moving objects on the road, within a wide enough range to allow the car to react in time to any obstacles.

For navigation, the Spirit of Berlin is also augmented by the Global Positioning System. This is hardly an earth-shaking innovation in an age when practically every new car off the lot comes equipped with a GPS system, and even it if doesn't, you can always buy a Garwin or Tom-Tom or other similar navigational device and mount it on your dashboard or rear-view mirror. But the Spirit of Berlin has a more elaborate system. It has four IBM computers, which is about how many it takes to process all the incoming data quickly enough to make real-time navigation feasible. The circuit boards receive the data from the sensors and process it along with the GPS position data. Did we mention the video cameras mounted on the roof to help the car determine the position of road markings and sidewalks? You need a whole separate computer just to process the video data. All of that has to be combined and analyzed before the computer can "decide" the car's next action.

Technology can be a wonderful thing, at least in terms of efficiency, but sometimes I wonder if we're losing something equally valuable in the process of automating everything. It goes without saying that everyone loathes those automated telemarketing calls, and we all dread calling airlines, computer tech support, and just about any 800 number, because we know we'll have to keep pushing buttons or struggling with a limited Voice Recognition system to work through a myriad of pointless options before we reach a human voice (and hopefully this will happen before we smash the telephone in disgust).

I'm all for not having to maneuver in and out of impossibly tight parking spaces, but as fun as The Spirit of Berlin seems as a novelty, some of us enjoy doing our own driving. And our own wine-making. In September, I read an article in the Los Angeles Times about the introduction of mechanical harvesters by Napa Valley vintners. They're doing it mostly out of concern over not being able to meet their future workforce needs, as the INS tightens its supervision of the US/Mexico border; needless to say, the vintners rely heavily on migrant workers, and, as one admits in the article, they're often quite willing to turn a blind eye to less-than-perfect documentation. But the crackdown might mean fewer workers, ergo, the interest in mechanical harvesters. Still, I noted that ideally, they'd still prefer human labor. Because humans do better at quality control when it comes to picking grapes. It'd take an awful lot of sensors and computer programming to design an automated system as discriminating as your average grape picker.

I'd imagine the same is true of the actual crushing of the grapes during the wine-making process. No doubt it's become almost fully mechanized by now, at least for the major wine-makers. Gone are the days when people would stomp around in giant wooden vats to crush the grapes for wine-making. Which is kinda sad. There's something visceral about those experiences that you just don't get from automation. I had friends on Long Island who made their own wine each year, and can attest to the feeling of satisfaction one gets from feeding grapes through the mill to crush them, while someone else sits on a chair and scoops out most of the stems below. The sights, the smells, the textures, and the camaraderie  of everyone involved in the process -- these are things worth savoring, and salvaging. So, sure, there's room for technological improvements, and robotics and automation can make our lives easier in lots of little ways. But let's not let go entirely of the pleasures to be found in doing some things for ourselves.

Comments

[Lee Kottner]

I'm still waiting for the Jetson's folds-up-into-a-briefcase car. That would sure solve the parking problem. The next best thing seems to be the tiny car: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HYtro7PnBA8

And it was great seeing you and Sean again, even if you have gone over to the dark side of auto owners.

[Quasar9]

$25.00 a day parking in New York? That's cheap.
In the UK you can expect to pay £40.00 a day for a garage or 'night' parking space, and £40.00 a day to park at work or 'visitor' Parking @ Hospitals, that's in addition to £1.00 plus per litre of gasoline, and comgestion charges for inner cities.
Since presumably an 'employer' has to pick up these costs, you'd think humans would have enough brains and sense to build homes with at least one parking space per tenancy (included in cost of new build) and office blocs or worspaces with 'parking' facilities available on site - preferably with recharging facilities for electric motors - but who ever said humans were 'rational'.

I guess City (of London) stockbrokers must miss the seventies (the 1970s) when 'company' cars were tax deductable bonuses, when stockbrokers lived outside the city in the stockbroker belt on the Surrey, Kent and Shires broders of 'greater' London, where they kept their 'company' Rolls Royce, Bentley (or Ferrari or Porsche) garaged, and commuted to work.

Alas Suburbia where are you now. But it seems our love affair with the car may soon mean only the rich and the super rich will be able to afford to travel on the Queen's Highways. As for delivery vans, tradesmen & cleaners, don't be surprised if their fees keep going up - no, they are not robbing you - they are simply trying to keep up with the costs of modern 'motoring' to work. Or do we expect cleaners and plumbers to commute to work on their cycles with bucket & sponge, to keep the 'service' costs down.

Or maybe we expect the 'mexican' maid to live in the cellar or in a shed not far from her work place. Well they certainly don't have a 'maids' room in new build housing in the uk - well at least not in your 'average' new build, where there's barely enough room for two people to cohabit, and the rooms are definitely not big enough to swing a cat.

But hell, maybe the 'universe' expects us to turn Japanese - and our pay will only be high enough to be packed into the 'metro' like sardines, and our sleeping place will be in 'coffin' hotels. Well if that doesn't reduce population growth, nothing less than neutering at birth will - lol.

[marvin]

50 years ago, in Rockland County NY, 20 miles north of Manhattan

A gentleman farmer named Everett Crosby had a vineyard on a hill called High Tor, the title of a play by Maxwell Anderson. At harvest time he would have a picking party, with his friends picking the grapes. On one side, there would be Burgess Meredith, on the other, Paulette Goddard, in front Maxwell Anderson's sons and behind you Lotte Lenya and Kurt Weill. I dont know if this is a suitable replacement for migrant labor. Do you suppose Tom and Brad and all the Britney's would volunteer?

[Robinki]

Minor quibble: Automat invented in 1950s? You were fifty years off, Jennifer, Horn and Hardart's was old, old old in the fifties. Their first Automat, where you inserted coins in a slot, then got the food from a little compartment, was installed in Philly in 1902. The New Yorker had cartoons about Automats from its start in the 20s.

[marvin]

In the depression one could get free ketchup at the Automat, add hot water from the wall dispenser, and have ketchup soup.There were booths at which women made change - counting out nickels at lightning speed. More fun than ATM's. A nickel wiuld buy great baked beans. I worry that we are heading back

[Lab Lemming]

Hang on, I was in NY last week. Are you guys following me around..?

[Charles Pergiel]

I am trying to put together a presentation and the coordinator for the event tells me I need permission for all the pictures I use. I would like to use the photo of the Volkswagen automated parking garage. Can you give me permission to use it, or tell me who can?

http://twistedphysics.typepad.com/cocktail_party_physics/images/2007/12/08/volkswagen_autostadt_580x.jpg

or

http://twistedphysics.typepad.com/.shared/image.html?/photos/uncategorized/2007/12/08/volkswagen_autostadt_580x.jpg