Advantages of a Fully Automatic System

Fully automatic parking systems are becoming more popular and desirable every day. These systems have been used in Europe and Asia since the 70?s and are starting to enter into the United States. Even though many are still skeptical about letting a machine park their cars it can be argued that mechanized parking is a safer and simpler way of parking that benefits everybody including the environment.

There is no question that modern vehicles become safer and more powerful every day although they are far more fragile than we think. Cars cannnot be handled carelessly, they cannot be stacked on each other for transportation or storage, they need to be protected from getting hit by anything substantial and even the light touch of another metallic object may cause considerable damage. Additionally, cars are difficult to drive at low speed, making the handling within a parking structure a dangerous environment.

Conventional parking garages need to allow enough surface throughout the building to make sure that any driver can park an average size car onto a parking space. Therefore the design of the garage needs to include wide driving aisles, ramps that do not exceed certain maximum slopes, wide parking spaces, enough lighting, stairs and elevators, emergency exits, security, signals, etc.

A fully automatic parking machine simplifies the design of a parking garage by mechanizing the transportation of the cars within the garage. The absence of human interaction allows the new design to be reduced to the exact minimum dimensions needed to transport cars from point A to point B.

A Swiss-Park Fully Automatic Parking Machine is more effective than parking the car ourselves because:

- It allows cars to move in 90 degree angles.

- The cars travel vertically to the parking levels on an elevator not by ramps.

- It eliminates large drive aisles required for a car to turn onto a parking space.

- It narrows the width of a parking space to only what a car actually requires.

- It eliminates the vertical clearance required for humans to walk comfortably in a garage limiting it to the car height.

- It eliminates the risk of cars getting hit by common ?garage hazards? such as careless pedestrians or other cars doors.

How it works

A Swiss-Park fully automatic machine transports cars from an entry port where the driver parks the car to a parking space located within the parking structure. Once the driver leaves the car behind closed doors in the entry port, a dolly system slides underneath the car from the front (or rear) end and lifts it up at the tires. At that moment the car is able to move in 90 degree angles longitudinally, laterally and vertically, and will be transported to its parking space which consists of a small parking pedestal mounted on concrete slabs same as in a normal parking structure. The pedestal helps the dolly systems slide back out from underneath the car and proceed to retrieve the next car either in or out of the garage.

The Swiss-Park Fully Automatic system integrates the concrete structure of the building to its design and does not require a complete new building design, making it completely adjustable to any configuration, even in existing buildings where an automatic parking system needs to be implemented.