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London Gatwick has launched a robotic airport parking service
- inigyou 2mo agoThere are systems where you park your car on a moving platform and the whole platform slots into an underground warehouse. That seems simpler and safer.
- dybber 2mo agoI don’t think they’re mechanically simpler. Those kinds of underground garages probably require a lot of maintenance to keep running.
- walthamstow 2mo agoIt's quite reasonably priced too (for airport parking), about £80 a week booking for September today. I paid that for short stay parking at Stansted earlier this summer.
- sixQuarks 2mo agoThat is pretty good pricing. I’m surprised. I wonder if this is just introductory pricing. It seems like there’s not much throughput for something like this. I can’t see how this could handle a constant stream of people wanting to park their cars.
- michaelt 2mo ago> It seems like there’s not much throughput for something like this. I can’t see how this could handle a constant stream of people wanting to park their cars. Assume your car park is a grid of cars, 20 cars wide and 20 cars long, i.e. 400 parking spaces. You make the entire first row drop-off/pick up points. With 20 pick up/drop off points you can have a lot of people dropping off or picking up at the same time. And you know pretty well when people will be picking up their cars, as you know their flight arrival details. Assume your average airport parking customer parks for 5 days, that's 80 arrivals and 80 departures per day. Each of your 20 pick-up/drop-off points only needs to handle 4 pick-ups and 4 drop-offs per day. To me that sounds feasible.
- sixQuarks 2mo agoYeah, in theory, but this assumes a linear demand curve, whereas there may be periods where lots of people come to park at the same time. Most airport parking lots have thousands of spots so you’d need a lot
- michaelt 2mo ago> there may be periods where lots of people come to park at the same time. At least in my country, airports under-provision infrastructure and ask travellers to arrive 2-3 hours before their flights to make up for it. If a person has to queue for 10 minutes for a drop-off bay to become available, that's just the normal airport experience. > Most airport parking lots have thousands of spots so you’d need a lot My point is: If you've got space for a lot of parked cars, you've got space for a lot of drop-off bays. If you've got space to build a car park with thousands of spaces, you've got space to give it hundreds of pick-up spots.
- tehwebguy 2mo agoWow, who is subsidizing it?
- throw2ih020 2mo agoLondon Gatwick is outside of London, so I assume land costs are low enough that a multi-story car park isn't too expensive.
- 0x3f 2mo agoMost 'London' airports are outside of London and they still charge a ton for parking. Captive audience. This one is unusually cheap, even for Gatwick.
- 7952 2mo agoMost of the long term parking is surface rather than multi storey.
- hiitsmyaccount 2mo ago[dead]
- Havoc 2mo agoI very much doubt this robot is carting them up an incline to a multi story
- smnscu 2mo agoI'd be curious how it handles someone parking poorly in that bay e.g. diagonally. Presumably those lines serve as a parking guide and the door won't close unless you park correctly.
- alt227 2mo agoIMO this would be a terrible idea to let the robots park cars in the same car park as humans. They most likely have a dedicated car park for this where ever car is parked by a robot. The article says: "A Stanley Robotics autonomous parking robot then slides underneath the vehicle, lifts it by its tyres and transports it to a secure storage area." Which seems to suggest this.
- cespare 2mo agoThe parent is wondering about parking in the bay, before the robot picks it up.
- wildzzz 2mo agoIt sounds like the actual lot will be robots only as it mentions parking cars closer together to maximize capacity.
- antihero 2mo agoI think the OP was talking about humans parking weirdly in the garage the robot picks them up from, not the car park itself—the car park itself is robot only (so they can jam cars together).
- Elhana 2mo agoRobot = some 3rd world country guy driving in remotely
- throw2ih020 2mo agoThe local car wash has lights that help you park the car pretty precisely under the wash robot. No rails or anything, you park right underneath the robot and it moves around and over the car. The robot doesn't start until you are in position.
- trebligdivad 2mo agoI wonder what their secure parking area looks like.
- stronglikedan 2mo agoIf you knew what it looked like, it wouldn't be as secure!
- helsinkiandrew 2mo agoYou can see it on Google maps: https://maps.app.goo.gl/MQjWHbbc5jeUryGU7?g_st=ic https://maps.app.goo.gl/MQjWHbbc5jeUryGU7?g_st=ic
- trebligdivad 2mo agoSo is it that normal looking parking area or is that a multi storey behind the places they show in the video?
- krisoft 2mo agoA fenced off flat parking lot with a few cameras here and there. Not sure what you expect.
- trebligdivad 2mo agoWell that's why I ask - a lot of 'secure' airport parking suffers from people stealing from it.
- jq-r 2mo agoHonest question, what there is to steal from a car what was left on the parking lot? Especially on an airport where I assume everyone flies off with their luggage and leave nothing or nothing of value behind.
- trebligdivad 2mo ago
- jdsfijfdsifs 2mo ago[dead]
- beardyw 2mo agoI remember parking in central London where you left your car in a single space inside a building and it would whisk it up onto some unseen location. I think that was under human control but maybe it will make a comeback with automation.
- 0x3f 2mo agoWhere was this? I've only seen it in London at very high end residential places. Even then it's rare. Most privately-owned public car parks in London are dilapidated and full of thieves, but still command premium pricing. It would surprise me if one bothered to build the infra for this.
- tonyedgecombe 2mo agoI remember using one in Fleet Street in the eighties.
- beardyw 2mo agoAs in the other comment here it was in the 80s, and my memory isn't up to where it was.
- krisoft 2mo agoThere are some horror stories when those kind of systems break down. For example this one is about a van which got stuck in one for two years: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cx207jwknp5o https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cx207jwknp5o Or there was one in Sweden which trapped cars for 2 months: https://www.mitti.se/nyheter/fnurret-pa-psnurran--m-vill-se-bostader-istallet-6.3.84418.b4589f304a https://www.mitti.se/nyheter/fnurret-pa-psnurran--m-vill-se-... (sorry, could only find a swedish source) It is because these kind of systems are complicated bespoke automation. When it breaks down it costs a fortune to fix it. And what can happen is that different parties (operators vs manufacture vs maintainer) gets into a contract dispute to see who is liable to pay to get it fixed. Which as you can guess can take years to play out. Meanwhile your vehicle is stuck and nobody who could is interested in spending a penny on getting it out. In contrast to that this project is better in two ways. There are multiple robots. (or at least there really should be) So if one breaks down the other robots can still retrieve cars (albeit of course with reduced throughput). And because the storage is just a flat parking lot if all the robots give up the ghost at the same time humans can drive out the cars from the edges of the storage rows.
- PaulRobinson 2mo agoAs a general rule, you should take the train to Gatwick if you can, but this is reasonably priced and next time I'm flying from Gatwick I'll probably drive and do this - the train route for me is a bit fiddly, and the worst bit of any London airport for a local is long-stay parking. I'm much closer to Heathrow but the flights from LGW are so much cheaper, it more than covers two weeks of parking at this price.
- embedding-shape 2mo ago> The service must be booked in advance. Same-day drive-up parking is not available. Interesting, I wonder if this is just a "Like to be able to see availability and cross-reference data to set individual pricing" or if it's because of a technical limitation, and if so, what could that possibly be?
- dlopes7 2mo agoWell if there are 100 cars waiting in line for the little garage to be available it defeats the purpose
- pontus 2mo agoSo I'll have to park my car in a garage first, then take a bus to the terminal just so that a robot can move my car from the place where I parked it to a different place? I was hoping it'd be something where I'd pull up to the curb, grab my bags and head in while the robot parked the car for me but apparently I'll still have to take a bus to the terminal?
- simonklee 2mo agoExactly, i think this product is solving an airport problem and not a user problem. Whenever i park at an airport i always look for the shortest distance to terminal / price, then chose an option that lands within an acceptable range. Unless i'm way for very long shuttle-bus isn't really on the table.
- amelius 2mo agoIt's still an impressive engineering feat, and (probably, given recent AI advances) an incredible time to market. I wonder when they started working on this, how big their company is, how much training data they put into it, etc. What is the name of the company that built this?
- domh 2mo agoIt says Stanley Robotics in the article: https://www.stanley-robotics.com/ https://www.stanley-robotics.com/ Edit: seems like they got bought out in 2024 by HL Robotics: https://en.hlrobotics.co.kr/ https://en.hlrobotics.co.kr/
- mschuster91 2mo ago> how much training data they put into it This kind of stuff has been the norm literally for decades in any major harbor. No AI BS needed.
- kkrkgbbsvjdlzn 2mo agoWe had AI in the 80/90s, we even had an AI hype in the 80/90s.
- djhworld 2mo agoI always wonder with solutions like these how stuff like alarm systems on the car cope with the car being lifted, the vibrations encountered as its being towed. Unless they tell you to switch the alarm system off I guess.
- 0x3f 2mo agoI don't think car alarms detect these kinds of vibrations. It's specifically tilt and more impactful stuff. Certainly, the alarm is never going off when I get my car back via the lifts that I've used. It's probably too smooth.
- papercrane 2mo agoThe problem will be aftermarket car alarms. There used to be a car that parked on the street near my apartment that would go off ever time a bus went by it.
- walrus01 2mo agoCar alarms go off all the time on ferries from cars that really don't like being locked and moved.
- 0x3f 2mo agoFerries tilt and jolt in a way that predictable-path car lifts don't.
- txomon 2mo agoAm I the only one bothered because the license plate masking they have used is so bad that you can see the License plate whole several times?
- ryanmcbride 2mo agoWow finally something capable of parking cars! I'm sure it'll be so much better and cheaper than just paying valets to do it too!
- flipbrad 2mo agoI wonder what the failure mode for something like this is (e.g. in bad weather, after a power cut, a car catches fire, etc). Nobody in the country with keys, cars parked so close together you probably couldn't get in anyway... could be interesting!
- mschuster91 2mo ago> a car catches fire That's a solved problem, drench the car in copious amounts of water and flush all oxygen with high pressure CO2 tanks.
- SoftTalker 2mo agoBEV thermal runaway fires are certainly not a solved problem. I'm not sure they are as common as some critics suggest, but they are difficult when they happen.
- mschuster91 2mo ago> I'm not sure they are as common as some critics suggest, but they are difficult when they happen. Indeed, and the usual solution that firefighters choose is to dump copious amounts of water onto the burning vehicle and then drown the carcass into even more water. The biggest issue is that it takes time for the firefighters to arrive - about 10 minutes in Germany by law - and so a fire has quite the time to progress.
- ifwinterco 2mo agoEven without BEVs a fire in a car park can easily result in the whole thing burning to the ground if you're not careful. It happened at Luton a few years ago, and I think in the end they worked out it was a diesel that started it. You're right though, if every car is a BEV of unknown battery health left for a week+ packed bumper to bumper in a baking hot car park in the middle of summer, that would definitely be considerably worse
- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]
- ajay-b 2mo ago"Unlike traditional valet parking, passengers retain possession of their keys throughout their trip." "If passengers accidentally leave an essential item in the vehicle after drop-off, on-site staff will be available to retrieve emergency items." But.. how would they get that emergency item if they don't have the keys?
- cortesoft 2mo agoFirst thing I thought, too. Seems like mutually exclusive features.
- beejiu 2mo agoYou give them the keys, then they go to the site to collect your item.
- bravoetch 2mo agoThey can turn your alarm off while they're fetching your pills.
- mbreese 2mo agoI can remote lock/unlock my car from an app, so I’m guessing this is what they are thinking about.
- chrisjj 2mo agoWouldn't that need the parked car to have internet?
- matthewpick 2mo agoYou could pack the cars so close together that no one could get into them. Could be seen as a bit of a theft deterrent, although I’m sure the car park itself is pretty secure.
- znkynz 2mo agoThat's the value change right? You can park more densely as no one needs to get in our out of the vehicle.
- pj_mukh 2mo agoGreat, now let's (gradually) get rid of all surface parking lots and build hyper-optimized multi-floor parking setups not made for human driving. A sort of Ocado Grocery Warehouse [1] for cars. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ssZ_8cqfBlE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ssZ_8cqfBlE As always, yes I know this already exists in Japan.
- amiga386 2mo agoNot the best example... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EQQlREtqAM8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EQQlREtqAM8 As far as I understand, first one Ocado robot went on fire, it doesn't have a sensor for fire so it kept going. Neither do its neighbours, who pass right by it and catch fire themselves. And so it keeps going until everything is on fire.
- rwmj 2mo agohttps://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026/jul/26/water-supply-failure-gatwick-airport-toilets-bars-restaurants https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026/jul/26/water-supply... As long as you don't want to use the toilet.
- flkiwi 2mo agoIt's the perfect juxtaposition of stories.
- gib444 2mo agoSeems it's becoming all too frequent in Kent and Sussex
- ukrulez 2mo agoMore fun to spend millions on AI than fixing literal shit.
- jryle70 2mo agoEven more fun to bash AI from the comfort of HN without knowing how much AI is being used, or at all, in this case.
- reenorap 2mo agoThe cookie screen for this web site is the most deceitful I’ve come across in a long time. How do I report this?
- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]
- artisinal 2mo agoWill probably not be long until a YouTuber tries to hide in their car while it gets picked up. Would make for a fun video. Tom Scott perhaps? Though he will likely get full access to the system.
- pkulak 2mo agoI guess we can add this to the ever-growing list of extremely expensive, complicated, inefficient and convoluted solutions to problems that end with the final specification: "but it can't be a train".
- ChrisMarshallNY 2mo agoMy company used to cover a car service for us (limo), my door to the terminal. When they set up the AirTrain, I stopped using the car service. It took longer, but I have always had a soft spot for mass transit, and I kind of got a kick out of boarding a train in Huntington, NY, and leaving the train, in Shinagawa.
- dyauspitr 2mo agoYeah because I want to haul all my luggage on a train journey when I go to the airport. I’ll take a train to a lot of places but the airport is not one of them.
- rpadovani 2mo agoMy company pays for taxi from my door to the airport and I still take the train, unless I am leaving before dawn. There is both a rational environment choice in that, and a nice feeling of being part of a humming crowd
- varispeed 2mo agoI heard horror stories, where "secure storage area" was actually a field without any security. Not saying this is the case here, but one must be mad to give a car like that without knowing exact location it is going. It's one of the things where I can't see what is there robot's role here.
- djhworld 2mo agoI doubt the robots have sufficient enough traction/mobility to navigate on any surface that isn't reasonably smooth like tarmac. Also I'd wager the car park the robots go to isn't that far away from the drop off location, most likely on the same land owned by the airport.
- varispeed 2mo agoMy guess is they take the car away from the drop off point to employee pick up point and human drives them away to the "secure location".
- nttylock 2mo ago[flagged]
- simonbarker87 2mo agoOf all the airports to do it at in the UK this is probably the one that doesn’t need it. Parking at Gatwick is a breeze, lots of options close and far from the airport and quite reasonably priced. Now Luton, that’s another story.
- blondie9x 2mo agoThis is so unnecessary. Just make better transit options and make it more affordable for people to go to airport.
- ukrulez 2mo agoWhy even go to the airport? Take the train to where you are going.
- djhworld 2mo agoIt's not quite clear from the video but it looks to me like you park up in the garage, and there's a garage door on the other side. So as you 'check in', I guess the 'human' side you drove in on, that door closes, and then the other side opens for the robots to collect the car which I'm guessing is also where the car storage is. Sort of feels like those videos you see of high tech warehouses where the human workers really only operate on the outskirts of the building, and everything central is completely automated (picking, sorting, storing, inventory etc)
- Finnucane 2mo agoSo robots: yes. Water: no.
- lucb1e 2mo ago15 quid that it won't work without installing an app that could have been a website or a card swipe terminal
- longsangstan 2mo agoI am quite surprised by the amount of negative comments here. My immediate reaction after watching the video is that this is pretty cool and I want to try it, even though I expect issues given that it is the first service of this kind in London.
- Tade0 2mo agoPersonally I wonder why didn't they put several Pater Noster parking machines instead. Systems with eight slots have decent throughout, the same density as cars parked side-by-side and bumper-to-bumper - even including the space needed to roll out - and are mechanically simple compared to just about anything else in this space.
- forgetfreeman 2mo agoReplacing "hand over your keys" with "perform detailed inspection of your vehicle, including undercarriage and suspension for damage before leaving" doesn't sound particularly enticing. Given I'm capable of parking my own vehicle without having an anxiety attack in the process I'm also fairly certain this thing doesn't solve any of my problems. I am likewise surprised that this seemingly pointless, grossly overengineered system that is nakedly hostile to minimum wage tier workers like valet service drivers isn't being warmly received here, but for different reasons.
- dgellow 2mo agoI never thought about this, can you steal cars by lifting them like that in the air? Not that I think that will happen, but it would be really funny to hack such a robot and just collect cars around
- jameshart 2mo agoThis technique is frequently used by towing companies impounding cars and reposession agents collecting cars for loan defaults - absolutely you can pick up and take a car away with the right hardware. Just for most people a stolen locked car isn’t really of much uses.
- kkrkgbbsvjdlzn 2mo agoAlready invented protection for this. https://youtube.com/watch?v=n1Ug4I89c98 https://youtube.com/watch?v=n1Ug4I89c98
- OptionOfT 2mo agoYes. If you can get under it.
- jauntywundrkind 2mo agoA sci-fi dream i have is that cars and their engines decouple. That you just own a shell, an egg, and the town owns all the engines. (This dream also includes warehouses and delivery robots of many sizes owned by the town too). In a funny way, this sort of does that. Sure your car still has an engine but this very much is the car-shell tractor, in practice. This is really neat to see. I wish them luck. I hope it is reliable enough! It looks pretty straightforwards in how it picks up wheels, which is neat.
- myself248 2mo agoI wonder how many people will forget to roll up their windows because they parked in a garage, then the robot leaves the car outside for a week, then the owner comes back to find the car back in the garage but inexplicably soggy and full of mold. Does the process have a check for forgotten windows?
- dybber 2mo agoIs parking with the windows open a normal thing to do in the UK?
- myself248 2mo agoIn a garage?
- nfbdhdfbf 2mo agoYou didn’t answer the question Is that a thing people do in the UK? I’ve never heard of anybody doing that. I’m not sure why you would do it.
- clort 2mo agoUnlikely to be normal, but I have been doing it at a couple of places I park at this year, since I'm there for a while, have to park in the sun and the places are semi-enclosed (ie, it is fenced so random people not walking around but not secure compound level). Also, my car is 17yrs old, I got it for free and don't keep valuable items inside. I prefer leaving the window open to coming back to 38degC inside. No aircon.
- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]
- ThrowawayTestr 2mo agoWhat difference does that make?
- jalada 2mo agoSimultaneously - https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026/jul/26/water-supply-failure-gatwick-airport-toilets-bars-restaurants https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026/jul/26/water-supply...
- kylehotchkiss 2mo agoIt’s exciting to invest in the future and not exciting to invest in infrastructure
- joe463369 2mo agoNeither VINCI Airports nor Stanley Robotics are responsible for the water infrastructure in South East England.
- jankcorn 2mo agoThis seems little different from the Automated Parking Systems that I saw in widespread use in Japan from the 1980's: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automated_parking_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automated_parking_system (The main difference being 3D in Japan and 2D at Gatwick)
- lrae 2mo ago> Maximum weight: 2.6 tonnes Wonder what the actual limit is and what happens when you're above it (and the other max. dimensions)? Couple of EVs out there that are heavier than 2.6 tonnes now. (Volvo EX90, Mercedes EQS, BMW iX, Ioniq 9, Rivians (not yet in the UK), ... and many more right around that weight.) Is it getting measured in the cabin and declines you?
- clort 2mo agoSince you have to book in advance, I guess you give them the number plate details. They can look it up online to see what kind of vehicle it is and can decline to book if too heavy. They can cross check the number plate when you arrive.
- ukrulez 2mo agoThis problem has already been solved, better. 100 years ago. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Car_elevator https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Car_elevator
- oasisbob 2mo agoJust in case anyone else is wondering, that article mentions that you get to keep your keys no less than eight times, while being light on all other details. I miss publications with skilled human editors.
- OptionOfT 2mo agoThis is interesting for the point of saving space. You need a lot less space between cars and can easily park multiple rows without having to leave egress space. All you then need to do is move 3 other cars. Give a buffer that should be feasible.
- Onavo 2mo agoCan it handle EVs safely? The bottom battery often causes...issues if you don't have a lifting puck to spread the weight.
- jonplackett 2mo agoThe reality of this is a lot less exciting than the headline implies.
- mfldkjgkfl 2mo agoIn what way is this better than an uber?
- tene80i 2mo agoPrice, depending on how far away you live.
- bookofjoe 2mo ago>Gatwick Airport left without running water after major outage https://archive.ph/IrBH8#selection-575.0-575.61 https://archive.ph/IrBH8#selection-575.0-575.61
- harvey9 2mo agoThis seems like valet parking-like but drivers keep their keys. Possibly solving the untrustworthy valet problem, but unlikely to be price-competitve with the cheap off-site parking firms that usually get mentioned in the consumer problems columns.
- amiga386 2mo agoWill it meet the same fate as the gimmicky Autosafe SkyPark that opened in 2001 and went bankrupt in 2003, and still had cars in it when the building was demolished nearly 20 years later? https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-edinburgh-east-fife-42789879 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-edinburgh-east-fife-4...
- kioleanu 2mo agoAre these not the guys that ask like 7 pounds to drive up to kiss & fly? Good to see that money’s put to good use!
- jplrssn 2mo ago£7 is about the price of a pint. Surely that’s worth it given the convenience of driving right up to the front door of the terminal?
- kioleanu 2mo agoI may be a socialist but being able to bring your heavy luggage to the door of the place you already pay a fee to be at (airport taxes) should be free, no? Like in all other parts of Europe And they say, oh, no, you can come for free if you’re willing to walk 15 minutes to the terminal. No, that’s greed plain and simple.
- Gud 2mo agoNot everyone takes the car. Why should people who don't deem it necessary to take a personal vehicle to one of the most expensive locations on the planet(city airport) subsidize those who do?
- kioleanu 2mo agoWhat exactly would be subsidized by the people taking the train if the people driving up to (not parking at!) the airport wouldn’t pay a fee?
- Gud 2mo agoThe roads at the airport? With that said, at Zürich airport, you do have ~5 minutes before there's a charge which I find reasonable.
- amiga386 2mo agoYou're behind the times. It's 10 pounds now. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c2lqd72d4lqo https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c2lqd72d4lqo
- ashayh 2mo agoMeanwhile, Gatwick currently doesn't have running toilets: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cdew2dnxlzzo https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cdew2dnxlzzo How about we fix basic issue as a species first, before going all robots and AI and trips to Mars?
- fortran77 2mo agoThe video didn't show how it actually gets under your t[y|i]res and then gets out from under your tires when it's moved it.
- luciana1u 2mo ago[flagged]
- nialv7 2mo agomeanwhile, in japan: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=voYdl7IFZsM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=voYdl7IFZsM
- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]
- Traster 2mo agoHaving been to Gatwick plenty of times, the weakness with this vs the already existing valet parking is that the valet parking is just 1 story of the short stay car park. You just drive up, drop your keys and go, your car is parked in a long line of cars that they can asynchronously drive off to long stay. The key thing is the location - you're a 30 second walk over a bridge into the terminal. Probably a hundred cars can be sitting waiting to be driven off to the long stay at the time, so they can handle the drop off/pick up of many cars at once. Whereas with this solution each "bay" will be occupied for a time while the autonomous robot drives off the previous vehicle, so you either need to over-provision - have many robots servicing a single bay to cope with peak times, or you'll need some local skid buffer. From a customer point of view. This is on the outskirts of the airport so it's a much longer walk without a covered path (so you'll get wet because at some point it will start raining again in the UK). It's maybe slightly better than long stay, where you do need a bus journey (which tbh isn't that bad). But I'm not sure how much juice is in this application to squeeze.
- peder 2mo agoPresumably this robotic valet will shift more towards long-term parking distant from the airport when it's known a customer is not returning. Today that's presumably cost ineffective.