Return of the Robots

Robotic Parking Systems (RPS) opened the Middle East's first robotic car park in Dubai in August, 2009. The car park, located at Ibn Batuta Gate, a shopping, hotel and office complex in Jebel Ali, is a success for RPS, especially when the construction is compared with the company's last robotic parking project in Hoboken, New Jersey.

 

"The Ibn Battuta Gate car park actually took less time to build than the previous garage despite an increase in size from 324 spaces to

765 spaces," says Constantin Haag, Chief Operating Officer, RPS. "The Hoboken garage was started in 1999 and completed in 2002. The Ibn Battuta Gate garage was completed in half the time even though it was more than twice as large."

 

"The major part of the garage construction was well in hand when the economic downturn hit," Haag adds. "While it may have slowed down the overall project to which the garage is attached, we dodged the worst of it."

 

Those familiar with the Hoboken project may ask: What has changed? Why did this project go so much faster?

 

"There are two factors in play," Haag explains. "First is simply that good quality management means you strive to learn and improve constantly. Robotic Parking pioneered the return of automated parking to the US -- first with the demonstration garage in Ohio and then the first new commercial project in New Jersey -- and the experience gained there and in other projects is brought to bear on the next.

The second is that there was much less red tape to deal with in Dubai. That alone probably added a year to the project in New Jersey."

 

Haag says that in Dubai there were absolutely no codes covering this type of technology. Robotic parking was a new technology for all the concerned authorities. So RPS was able to contribute to the development and implementation of several new codes to facilitate future projects.

 

"Robotic Parking Systems is working with others in the industry to develop codes and standards that will hopefully speed future projects in the US," Haag adds.

 

So far it appears that the lessons learned by RPS have been put to practical use. Hopefully we will see even more improvements on the company's next project, the Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC), which is even larger, at 1,200 spaces, with completion expected in Spring 2010.

Comments

[Constantin Haag]

The Dubai garage is an on-going refinement of the technology first implemented in Hoboken by Robotic Parking Systems which is designed from the ground up to scale to capacities much greater than Hoboken or even the new Ibn Battuta Gate garage.

[Harnadi Hidayat]

Congatulation! But being an inventor myself, I still focused to the way your new garage move the parked car. Is there something new invention or simply the same with Hoboken garages system? Thanks for info.