Fancy Parking 

Fancy Parking

Originally posted on Sunday, January 09, 2005

I remember back when I was in my senior year in La Salle I was thinking of a thesis topic and one of them was a carpark structure that would optimise the number of vehicles parked in a given area. What I had in mind at the time was something like a matrix of cubicles for cars.



It works just like a puzzle with the sliding pieces. When a car enters the entrance, the cubicle will be moved into the matrix and a new empty cubicle presented at the entrance. This may sound more like a mechanical engineering degree project than electronics but I was counting on making an electronic device to do the efficient cubicle shifting algorithm at the time.

To retrieve the car, the desired cubicle will be navigated to the entrance with the lease amount of mechanical movements possible. The advantage of this is that there is no need for a driveway and that is perfect for downtown areas with little real estate available for dedicated carpark buidlings.

Well guess what? I saw a version of my idea in actual use last night in Asakusa on my way to the Metro (subway) from the basketball gym. The structure is like a conveyor set vertically.



Here the cubicles are rotated clockwise (or counter-clockwise) to bring the cubicle to the entrance. The structure is very simple and doesn't require any smart algorithm (unless it is required to determine whether to move the cubicles clockwise or counter-clockwise to reduce the wait time and save power due to wasted movement).

Cool eh? Now anyone of you reading this planning to start your own carpark or carpark enabling business using this technique, please do not forget to check the patents first (it could be a patented technique. If it isn't please do not forget to send me goodies in exchange for the inspiration.


Originally posted on 1:33 PM