The next big thing in parking

"Please don't tip the robot." That's the advice the NYT gives today in a fasinating story about automated parking lots. Ari Milstein describes his garage in New York City:

A driver pulls off the street into a room roughly the size of a one-car garage attached to a house. The car rests on a large pallet, a traylike area with shallow troughs for the wheels. “Lasers check that the car is aligned,” Mr. Milstein said, and determines that it is not one of the trucks or S.U.V.’s too big for the garage. The driver locks the car, takes the keys and picks up an electronic card from a nearby machine. A large door closes behind the car; motion detectors ensure that no children or pets are left behind. Then the pallet holding the car slides below ground level, into two subterranean floors of storage.

This is a photo of the famous VW automated garage for new cars in Wolfsburg, Germany.