Hyundai Motor Group will launch Korea's first pilot to apply parking robots to apartment complexes. Attention is on whether parking robots can solve parking space shortages and energy waste that occurs while searching for a spot.
A consortium of Hyundai Motor Group's Hyundai Motor(005380), Hyundai WIA(011210) and Hyundai Engineering & Construction(000720) said on the 10th it will pursue a pilot project for parking robots in multifamily housing at Hillstate The Wave City in Siheung, Gyeonggi Province. The project is a smart pilot under the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport's smart city regulatory sandbox and will proceed with national funding support.
Hyundai Motor Group will run the pilot in a dedicated area with a total of 53 spaces on basement level one of Hillstate's parking lot, using two sets of Hyundai WIA parking robots. When a driver parks the vehicle in the designated pick-up and drop-off zone, the parking robot automatically recognizes the vehicle and transports it to an empty space.
To retrieve the vehicle, the driver can call it via a kiosk or the apartment wall pad. The parking robot will have already moved the car to the pick-up zone, allowing the driver to use the vehicle immediately after getting off the elevator.
Hyundai WIA's parking robot is a pair of thin, wide robots with a thickness of 110 mm that slide under the vehicle, lift the wheels and move the vehicle. Using the mounted lidar (LiDAR) sensors, it accurately recognizes the size and position of the vehicle's wheels and can lift the vehicle. It is designed to automatically park vehicles up to 3.4 tons, including sport-utility vehicles (SUVs), at a top speed of 1.2 meters per second.
It can also move in all directions—forward, backward, left and right—so it can move vehicles even in tight spaces where parking is difficult, and it can secure more parking spaces within the same area to improve space utilization.
A Hyundai WIA official said, "If we use parking robots, drivers do not need to drive and park themselves or move while remaining in the vehicle, so there is no need to secure space for opening and closing doors, allowing for narrower spacing between parking spots," and added, "We also plan to improve space utilization by applying double- and triple-parking methods."
Hyundai Motor Group expects parking robots to accommodate at least 20% and up to 50% more vehicles than existing parking lots. It can also cut the time drivers spend searching for empty spots, addressing wasted time and engine idling in the process. Separating vehicle and pedestrian paths will also reduce the risk of safety accidents in parking lots.
During the pilot period, Hyundai Motor Group plans to measure the time required per vehicle for entry and exit, users' actual waiting time, parking success rate, robot operating rate, monthly task count, and improvement rate in parking space efficiency.
Based on this, it will refine measures to improve laws and systems related to parking robots and build a virtual environment model to apply parking space layouts for various types of facilities, including residential, commercial, office, transport hubs, public and cultural buildings.
A Hyundai Motor Group official said, "This pilot project for parking robots in apartment complexes is an important step toward building a new parking paradigm for the smart city era, going beyond simple technology verification," and added, "In the real-life environment of apartment complexes, we will comprehensively verify the operational stability, efficiency and user convenience of parking robots and derive a standard model that can be expanded to various urban spaces at home and abroad."