Robot valet parking soon to be a reality at Gatwick

Wednesday, January 30, 2019

 In order to boost the number of parking spaces available Gatwick airport, the UK’s second busiest after Heathrow is working on a pilot project for robotic valet parking.

The airport is working with Stanley Robotic, a parking company that will explore the introduction of the technology at Gatwick. Currently the technology company is operating its car parking robots at Lyon airport.

From April onwards the trail will start and finish off by August as per a planning consultation document filed with Crawley Borough Council.

After the customers drive into the airport car park and leave their car in a “cabin” before departing for their flight the robot collects the car. There is a carrier underneath which moves it to a secured parking area.

The passenger’s itinerary will also get logged by the robot so that the car is ready and waiting when they arrive back at Gatwick.

The existing car parking spaces get optimized by the robotic valet parking and it introduces more capacity than the usual ‘self-park’ spaces.

In the Zone B of the airport’s south terminal the trial will be conducted and will take 170 slots from the available 2,350 spaces which will be further replaced with 270 robotic valet parking spaces. This will create an extra 100 spaces.

Cars will get more packed into the same area as the introduction of robotic valet parking will increase the capacity from 6,000 to 8,500.

Robotic cars can be parked more precisely unlike the self-park spaces and it doesn’t require the driver to get out of the car.

Gatwick says that with the introduction of robotic valet parking, capacity could increase from 6,000 to 8,500. Unlike self-park spaces, robotically parked cars can be parked more precisely and do not need to leave space for a driver to get out of the car – meaning more cars can be packed into the same area.

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