236 | PARKING
Automated parking system solutions Current car parking practices at residential, commercial and public buildings can be greatly improved with automated parking systems Words | Jan Kristof Noll, Lödige Systems GmbH, Germany
Based in the German town of Warburg, the Lödige Industries Group is developing fully automated, space-saving and convenient car lots of the future. Lödige’s specialists have more than 60 years of expertise in handling and storage technology to draw on when developing and implementing these solutions.
Interest from Danish cities In the summer of 2015, Lödige Industries installed the largest automated parking system in Europe. The Cubile S system was part of the recently constructed Dokk1 library and community center in Aarhus, Denmark. So far, over half a million cars have used the automated car lot that has almost 1,000 parking spaces. Lödige’s turnkey solution included delivering the mechanical and electrical equipment, carrying out the steel and concrete work, and installing the transfer cabins, as well as the payment, control and IT systems. Parking in the Cubile S facility is stressfree and convenient for drivers. They simply park their cars at ground level in a well-lit and spacious entrance cabin, and take a parking ticket. After that, their car is parked automatically in a ‘park and hide’ operation. The cabin’s roller shutter closes and the car is transported underground in a lift. There, the Lödige Shifter, an ultra-flat robot, drives underneath the car and lifts it up at the wheels. The transfer vehicle then carries it from the lift to the actual parking space. To retrieve the car after the parking ticket has been paid, the whole process operates in reverse. When the car appears in the cabin at ground level, the driver can climb in and drive away. Only a chauffeur could make the process more convenient.
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Cubile S car lots are quick and efficient thanks to Lödige’s palletless Shifter technology. Less space is required for the same number of cars compared with conventional car lots. Drivers benefit too: they no longer need to park their car precisely, because the platform automatically aligns it.
The fully automated Cubile S parking system is particularly suitable for office blocks and public buildings with a parking capacity from 50 to more than 1,000 spaces. A Cubile S car lot also provides approximately 320 parking spaces at Blox, the new Danish Architecture Centre in Denmark’s capital, Copenhagen. Lödige has optimized the use of space in this car lot even further by accurately measuring the cars. Jan Noll, responsible for car parking systems at Lödige Systems, explains, “We actually measure every car. This means that we know whether we are dealing with a small vehicle or a large limousine. Our management software then decides whether to allocate two parking spaces to two large cars, one behind the other, or to use these two spaces to park three small cars. This
