Day 1: What's Parkit?

Hi guys, I am Sreeram, pursuing my final year of mechanical engineering at BITS Pilani, Goa campus, and this is the first of 90 blogs that I will be posting every day for the next 90 days. This is day 1, and welcome to how I bring Parkit to life. I’ll be frank with you guys; I just have a vague plan for now, but I plan to document everything I learn, everything I do and everything I create in this series. Today is all about what Parkit is and why I am interested in creating this product.

Everyone with a driver’s license knows that parking in general can be a pain: getting it accurately within the lines, the reversing, and checking the mirrors. Nowadays many restaurants, hotels and apartments even have valet parking for all customers, which makes life much easier. Just imagine the same valet parking, but rather than people driving your car to a designated location, two robots do the same job much more accurately and precisely while being extremely efficient.

Now I think you have a gist of what Parkit is. It’s two robots working alongside each other to lift a vehicle from a drop-off location to their designated parking spot, basically a robot valet parking system. But how does it work? Let’s say you, the driver, drop off your car at a common drop-off location. The two robots are alerted to the presence of the car at this location and start moving towards it. These robots will have omnidirectional wheels with which they traverse themselves underneath the car. One will align itself right in between the front wheels, and the other will align itself in between the two rear wheels.

Here comes the tricky part in my project, the arms that help lift the car. Each robot will have a total of 4 extendable arms, two on each side. These arms will press onto the curved surface of each wheel to create an upward force that lifts the car up. With this lift, the two robots will communicate with each other to carry the car to the specified parking spot, then carefully place it back down. Job done, the robots can return back to their home positions and wait for the next car to be parked.

So I do not have the money to create this for actual cars, so my idea is to either buy RC cars or make my own DIY cars and turn my room into a parking lot for small cars. I am extremely excited to learn, grow and create. That’s a wrap for day 1.

Reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8BKnSZsRQq0
Hyundai Motor Group