Robot eases the pain of parking

Leaving your car at any airport usually involves a long tramp to the terminal from the far-flung reaches of the car park.

And relocating the car for the trip home can be even more troublesome, in that jet lagged fog of cognition.

Thankfully, one of the world's forward-thinking airports (here's a tip, it's not Australian) has come up with an automated vehicle retrieval system named Ray. The robotic forklift-like device has commenced operation at Düsseldorf airport, picking up customers' cars and placing them out of harm's way, ready to be retrieved on the customer's return.

During periods when it's not parking cars, Ray will re-sort the cars for the sake of efficiency, relocating those that are due to be picked up sooner closer to the pick-up point. Ray even predicts your return for the car, based on flight times available through the airport's scheduling database. A smartphone app allows users to delay the retrieval of the car should there be a long wait for luggage, for instance.

Ray can spin around its own axis and its agility has allowed the airport to opt for 3m wide lanes, rather than 6m lanes in other car parks. This has increased car park capacity at Düsseldorf by up to 60 per cent, according to the management there.

For the moment, the system is under evaluation at Düsseldorf, and only covers a portion of the car park, but the airport will make its decision on the future of Ray before the end of the year. Presuming the system works faultlessly, its coverage will be expanded to include the rest of the car park.