The Robot Will Park Your Car Now

Central to living and driving in Los Angeles is the multi-level parking structure—concrete, subterranean labyrinths which are disquieting to be alone in, not to mention confusing when you forget where you’ve parked your car. Now an additional kind of parking experience is coming to LA: Automated parking garages that stack cars into elevator-like cubbies. Frances ventures to the 16th Street UCLA Outpatient Services Building in Santa Monica where Randall Miller of the development firm The Nautilus Group demonstrates its new robotic parking structure, which opens next month. As cities run low on real estate, the popularity of these systems have grown. Woody Nash from Boomerang Systems, Inc. explains how his team used car factory technology to design its solution, which can store twice the number of cars in half the amount of space.

The exterior of the garage for the 16th Street UCLA Outpatient Services Building in Santa Monica, designed by Michael Folonis Architects

The car arrives at the parking garage

The car pulls into a parking bay

Parking platforms allow cars to be moved between floors

Inside the robotic garage

Boomerang System's parking garage

Inside a Boomerang Systems parking bay

Cars are moved laterally in the garage

The garage can store twice the amount of cars

This video by Boomerang Systems demonstrates how "robot valets" can park cars more efficiently than human drivers