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DiggYou may remember a post I wrote back in August titled, "That robot is not getting a tip from me," which detailed how the Garden Street Garage in Hoboken, NJ, effectively held a few hundred cars hostage while it settled a dispute with the software company which powered its automated parking system. Today, The New York Times has a glowing article about these automated parking systems coming to the Big Apple itself.
According to The Times, several new buildings in the five boroughs of New York City have already begun using state-of-the-art automated garages as a selling point for their apartments. The Times makes no mention of the dispute which shut down the Garden Street Garage, but does admit that automated systems have been accused of being slow and occasionally dropping a car. I'm all for using technology to save space and streamline our day-to-day lives, but if I was thinking about plunking down $550/month for a spot in one of these garages, or even up to $200,000 to purchase the spot outright, I'd want some reassurances that the software will work, and the company who owns the software won't charge a king's ransom when the contract runs out. — Brian Ward
Image from Wired News.
Go to story from The New York Times
Technorati tags: robots.
As the developer of the system in the US and Canada. The difference between the Hobeken system and our system is worlds apart. Our system uses a technology that has 63 garages operating 99.9% of the time for over 23 years. The manufacturer has the worlds largest system operating in Turkey all with out the issues of Hobeken. The developers of Hobeken have, as I understand it only 1 system operating and that is Hobeken. I can't comment on the reliabilty of their system, other than to say, that based on blogs and newpapers reports it is a failure of a system. The good news is, that it does not have to be. Our system does not license the software to the buyer of the product. It is written on a regular os operating system in c basic. We provide the source codes so alterations can be made by firms others than ourselves. As a developer of Real Estate projects, I am not interested in proprietary software which has a hold on our customers. I believe our service, reliabilty, will speak for itself. Give our clients a reliable system, and make the process user friendly and we won't have any competitors. We have chosen a design which is much different than all of the other systems being discussed in the NYT article. Our NYC operator of the system has over 40 years in the garage business and the rates of the system are set by the operator, not the developer. Our understanding of the rates is that it is comparable to the open air lots in the 2 block radius of the location of our system. Please keep in mind that this system is like having your own private garage. We will have open demonstrations, video feeds so one can watch their car being park. The system opens sometime in January. We hope that the public will realize that in all new tech projects, that one need have only 1 bad experience to brand the entire industry suspect. The facts speak for themselves. Automotion Parking systems along with STOPA have a track record unparrell to any of the competition and can BE VERIFIED!
Amen to that. I'm all for technology improving our lives, but if I'm gonna throw down that amount of money on parking, the software better work with 99.9% accuracy and my car better not be dropped. And the software licensing issue is a bit scary...