Article from BTNews 27 JANUARY 2020
Robot parking moves forward
The future of robot parking for passengers’ cars at airports is about to take a big step forward at Lyon-Saint Exupéry in France, where a trial in place for a year is to be extended this summer to cover four times more spaces.
It follows an agreement between Stanley Robotics and Vinci Airports, which runs Lyon and has a majority shareholding in Gatwick. A similar test programme was launched at Gatwick last year (BTN 1 April 2019).
The Lyon deal will see the robotic car park expanded from 500 spaces to 2,000 in what the companies claim is a world first.
Passengers book a parking space on the Lyon Airport website, drop their vehicles in one of 28 dedicated cabins, then reach the terminals via a shuttle service located nearby. The robots then pick up each car and park it in the secure parking lot.
On returning from a trip, passengers recover their vehicles from one of the cabins. Stanley Robotics and Vinci Airports plan ultimately to offer more than 6,000 parking spaces.
Vinci Airports chairman Nicolas Notebaert said: “We pursue an ambitious industrial strategy to benefit passengers at all 46 of our airports and Lyon has followed it in exemplary fashion to become one of our three centres of excellence customer experience."
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