The city of Hoboken had a contract dispute with the operators of a robotic parking garage; the garage operators cancelled the city's license to its software and locked all the cars inside:
In the course of a contract dispute, the city of Hoboken had police escort the Robotic employees from the premises just a few days before the contract between both parties was set to expire. What the city didn't understand or perhaps concern itself with, is that they sent the company packing with its manuals and the intellectual property rights to the software that made the giant robotic parking structure work…
When it's working, the robotic garage is a wonder. It allows twice the parking of a traditional ramp garage, says Robotic's Clarke. "If you back off and look at this, you are looking at elevator technology."
"Wonkavator" might be more apt. The lifts act independently of each other, and move in many directions, instead of just up and down. Every entry/exit station can accommodate 40 cars per hour, and every space is essentially a separate machine acting cooperatively. As the lot is used, it learns when particular cars tend to be picked up and dropped off and shuffles its load to optimize pickup time.
