After this new invention you won’t have to worry about the thought of a valet parker stealing or taking something from your car anymore. At Germany’s Serva transport, developers have created Ray, a robot valet parking system.

Particularly aimed at business travelers, this robot valet parking system can be booked and controlled via an app. All the travelers have to do is drop the car off in the designated area and confirm that the car is empty by a nearby touch screen.

Ray operates by using sensors to measure and photograph the car, then lifts it to up to one of the 249 spots reserved for the robot forklifts.

The company claims that its space-saving system can park as much as 60% more cars than a human driver can. The airport will be charging $5.50 per hour for people to use this parking system.

“Our product is especially appealing to business travelers, who arrive at the airport shortly before the flight, seek efficient parking, and return within a few days,” said Thomas Schnalke, the airport’s managing director.

“Our jointly developed technology exchanges data automatically between RAY and Volkswagen cars via Bluetooth and thus facilitates the parking progress,” said Rupert Kock, the managing director at Serva Transport Systems.

Although this seems like a very unique thing and one of a kind, this is not the only robot valet parking system. A New Jersey startup called Boomerang is trying to take parking to the next level by creating an automated parking system which can park hundreds of cars.

According to Boomerang CEO Mark Patterson the better aspects of his system compared to Ray is that it is designed with multiple entry bays, multiple robots and multiple lifts so there is no single point of failure.

“Our system is installed in a garage with level concrete floors so there’s total fire separation between floors like in a conventional garage – most legacy systems are steel rack structures with no separation between floors,” Patterson said.

Both of these parking systems will surely impress its users by making valet parking better and easier for them but the competition between the two will be very high.

FSA Practice Questions

1. In the article, how does the author organize the paragraphs?

2. Select one sentence that best summarizes the work.

3. The author seems to offer what main idea?

4. What is the connotation of the word conventional?

5. In the piece, the word separation means what?