Automated Parking

Here is another

Any place looks great when there's a Pantera parked there.

Good luck

My Pantera in a third floor parking space/shelf. The video of the transfer from the subterranean level is fascinating and will be uploaded to our site soon.

Very Cool... More pictures are needed!

Your wish is my command! Go to this link and I have uploaded a couple of short video clips and a few photos. I will add more as I get the hang of it. Link is: http://autoparkit.shutterfly.com/.

The site requires a password...

It shouldn't require a password as I made it open to anyone to view, and I tried the link from the previous post. However, if it happens again, the password is tennis.

That is so cool!!!! The alignment of all the various beams must be critical. Does all that have to be checked every time we have an earthquake?

No. It meets all seismic codes and is designed to withstand significant shaking. And there isn't a single weld anywhere on that upper structure. It is a patented bolt together system that goes up exactly like an erector set. The upper 3 floors' structure was built in 8 hours, start to finish if you can believe it. If you're up in L.A., let me know, and I'll give you a tour. Bring your Pantera, and we'll video it going up and down.
Thanks for your interest.

quote:

Originally posted by tberg:
No. It meets all seismic codes and is designed to withstand significant shaking. And there isn't a single weld anywhere on that upper structure. It is a patented bolt together system that goes up exactly like an erector set. The upper 3 floors' structure was built in 8 hours, start to finish if you can believe it. If you're up in L.A., let me know, and I'll give you a tour. Bring your Pantera, and we'll video it going up and down.
Thanks for your interest.

Most structures that are designed to meet current building codes will experience damage, and that isn't limited to non-structural components. In fact, in the event of a significant earthquake, the building official won't probably let you back in the building until it has been looked over by a competent professional or structural engineer, and if there's damage, it could be "red-tagged" and no entry would be allowed.

There are structures that are designed to withstand anticipated ground motions from earthquakes without damage, but they are usually nuclear-related, bridges, command centers/dispatch areas, etc. However, the actual ground motions will vary.

Your "upper structure" is what a structural engineer calls a moment frame-based structure with bolt-together cast-steel components, but the beams are "dog-bone" reduced beam sections at the ends that are designed to yield and plastically deform, absorbing energy in the process. The beams are actually welded to the cast steel components in the shop and field-bolted together, so it seems as if it's a total bolt-together system. It will deform, move, and may need repair after significant ground shaking.

Pretty cool stuff, though. I do like it- just wanted to put my $.02 in there.

Dear Corey,
Thanks for your comments, and of course, in the case of a very significant earthquake, there is always potential for damage to any structure no matter how strict the seismic building code. The moment frames, in this case, as well as the i-beams are bolted together in a patented process from a northern Cal. company named ConnXtech. They are bolted together with a special collar at the intersection of the i-beams. It is spectacular to watch the installation. It's like watching time lapse photography in real time. The difficult part of the build process, in this case, is the fully automated aspect of the system that will allow a future tenant to simply drive in, get out of the car, go to an apartment and retrieve the vehicle, all with the wave of a tiny fob, and all done in approximately 30 seconds, while maintaining strict safety standards. The programmers have worked for months on getting this right. We are within a couple of weeks of finishing. It will be interesting to gauge potential tenants' reactions to the system when they start looking at the apartments. Updates will keep coming.

Please understand- we engineer energy dissipation into buildings. It is economically unfeasible to design most buildings to have no damage. Modern building codes prescriptively allow it to keep building costs down.

It would be cool to see how your system all works in person!

<= you can tell what I do for a living...

Corey spoken like a true Structural Engineer. LOL I agree most modern buildigs are not desinged to resist damage only collapse.

excuse the bad spelling my fingers move faster than my mind

quote:

my fingers move faster than my mind

Reminds of my son yesterday, he's 15 and training his English for next year's US summer vacation. He said, that he wanted to be so fluent in English, so that he could speak without thinking about it. I quickly said that if he wanted to learn to speak without thinking first, he should get his mother to teach him. She found it less amusing than he and I did...

New photos of my "red" collection in the automated parking structure. Dept. of Water and Power is beginning to hook up our power lines (as opposed to the diesel generator with which we are powering the system now), so that within a week or so we can start testing at full speed. We are running at about 30% speed now. So far, so good.

The next in my red collection

My daily driver "red" XKR

So what kind of safety protocols are in place? How would the system detect if a person was wandering around someplace they shouldn't be, or a large heavy object that somehow got into the space?

Upon driving into the loading bay, a series of cameras and sensors track the car as it enters. Infrared and motion detection sensors will not allow the garage door to shut, nor will it activate the lift to elevate to rotate the car until the entire loading bay room is clear. The cameras, besides memorializing the condition of the car as well as measuring the car, will also detect any foreign objects, living or otherwise in the loading bay and will not allow the system to operate if it detects anything. When the car's occupants go through the door leading to the apartments, as the door locks behind them, everything is then activated. This insures that no one is ever in the loading bay-lift area while in operation, and therefore no possibility of someone falling into the hole when the lift is either down in the subterranean level or up on the second or third levels. In the subterranean level where all of the equipment is located, there is no access except for service, and even service personnel will have to disable the system to work on it and to bypass sensors. The programming of these features has taken nearly as long as it took to build the structure as this is the prototype project and the programmers are writing the codes and protocols for all of our future builds. Thanks for your interest

Cool! I'd love to see it in action. I'll send you an email the next time I'm in the LA area.

Congrats on seeing your project realized in a working prototype. Hope it proves to be wildly successful.

Thanks Garth. I'd love to show it to you. Sometime between the end of November and Christmas we're going to have a "grand opening" where we're closing the alley behind the buidling and having a catered affair with local politicians, dignitaries, Dept. of Building and Safety officials, and friends. As soon as I have the date, you're welcome to come. Bring your Pantera down, and we'll put it through the paces.
Thanks again for your interest.
Ted

On safety, it's probably safer than some kid or even yourself parking your car, right?

Mikael,
It's absolutely safer since no one is ever in the structure when it begins to move. Also, since the entering auto is rotated 180 degrees as the first step in the parking process, a driver never has to back out of the garage (loading bay) and into traffic, he simply pulls forward with a clear view of oncoming cars. Also, since there is essentially no possibility of access to the cars, there is no need to hide valuables or empty the vehicle because it is fully secured. And finally, there is no potential for damage to a car since it sits on a steel pallet which is the only thing in contact with moving parts. No door dings, no scratches no scrapes,no one parked so close that you can't open your door to get in.
Thanks for your interest.

This is what the loading bay looks like when you drive in. There is also a tv monitor directly in front of the car that displays instructions facilitated by the overhead cameras that gives instructions as to how far to drive in, when to stop, whether to go a little right or left to position the car properly on the pallet.