Fraunhofer Institute's Automated Car Parking System

Rising traffic has forced cities to develop advanced parking houses. Especially in metro cities, the trouble is serious. #-Link-Snipped-# Parking is becoming costlier than driving itself. To present a solution to this problem, German engineers at Fraunhofer Institute have devised an automated method to park your cars and also provide with electric car charging facilities if required. The concept is called Parkhaus.

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Image Credit: Wikipedia

In today's parking lots, the driver has to spend much of his time in parking. In any parking building, he has to reach to the top encircling the giant structure and come back down on foot. Parkhaus presents an opportunity of having a multi-floor parking system accompanied with other facilities to make your car tuned back again. The scalable design is space saving so much so that it requires only 40% space for storing vehicles and 35% less space for parking as compared to traditional parking garage.

The design which is inspired by automated warehouses for storing goods requires the car owners only to park it on an automated lift and step out of the vehicle, rest of the care is taken by the system itself. The #-Link-Snipped-# system is being developed by Ralf Erdmann, head of the business division of the #-Link-Snipped-# for intelligent building innovation at the Fraunhofer Institute, Germany and his team.

The major problem which arises is of the capital required for establishing such parking lots as it would be a costly affair in any metro city. The plans to modify the existing system hence look feasible. The main advantage of the Parkhaus will be the charging stations that it will provide to its customers. Sustainability in electricity consumption can be achieved by photovoltaic cells mounted on exterior walls of the building. Photovoltaic cells are kept purely a complimentary energy source while energy will also be taken through the electricity distribution grid. The solution will not only avoid loads on the system during peak hours but also have a greener effect on the environment.

The people associated with this project are going to install 100 prototype parking lots with the help of joint partnership of #-Link-Snipped-#, The BES which is providing planning assistance and the industrial automation division of #-Link-Snipped-#. As the automated parking lots will be proved successful, they will also be used elsewhere in automobile market.

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