I climbed inside a giant robotic parking garage
I was going to film a video about a robot bicycle park. And then GIKEN, the company who built it, said: you know we do this for cars as well, right? ■ More details: www.giken.com/en/products/aut...
Local producer: Yasuharu Matsuno at Mind Architect
Camera: Julian Domanski
Editor: Michelle Martin / mrsmmartin
I'm a bit worried that this comes across as an advert. It's not - I reached out to the team at GIKEN, they had no editorial control, and no money changed hands. (Although they did, of course, go through all the paperwork required to let me climb into their giant robot parking garage.) They also asked me to include this: “Eco Cycle and Eco Park are brand names of GIKEN LTD. in Japan”, which seemed a reasonable enough request.
This video has an English dub available by changing the language option on supported devices.
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I'm a bit worried that this comes across as an advert. It's not - I reached out to the team at GIKEN, they had no editorial control, and no money changed hands. (Although they did, of course, go through all the paperwork required to let me climb into their giant robot parking garage.)
good boy
Could we get an unlisted video with more Gopro footage?
wish you had shown what's it like during rush hour
@@rebmcr Yes please.
@@rebmcr That would be great
Can we just spare a second and talk how insanly FAST this thing moves with 2Tons parked on it?
I want to see the power cables!
Tom said their main business is heavy machinery, I'm not surprised they have the expertise to move cars around that fast
2 tons for industrial equipment is peanuts
Yes, we can!
those cars definitely don't weigh 2 tons
Ooooo i like the slide out rall bits that deploy the car, will put the in the note book for my underground carpark
One day you'll be selling that house and the estate agents are going to be flabbergasted... I can just hear the "And this is the pantry, it leads to the underground car park and bunker. Oh and the workshop too"
Haha ofc you're here, love the vids mate.
I thought that was clever too. Good luck with it, always enjoy your work.
It looks extremely futuristic and cool. Rule of cool always wins.
it feels very Thunderbirds
You didn't mention this, but I noticed in the final images, that they turn the car around when retrieving it, so you just have to pull forward to exit. I've felt for a while that the reversing we do in car parks is one of the most dangerous parts of parking. People and cars are moving around you, and it is hard to see.
The design of it has a way to turn the car around built in, talk about smart engineering. Something like this would be a lot more preferable than a traditional parking garage. I wonder how they compare cost wise to a large parking garage structure.
@@TianarTruegard Expensive. With a traditional parking garage it's a bunch of concrete built up. With this, you need to excavate the area, reinforce the walls, install all the machinery (Which requires engineers that are likely paid more than your typical construction worker) and all for a facility that can store a fraction of the cars a garage can store- and only one can be put in or out at a time. Not to mention the fact they would need to change the scale of the machinery to account for larger vehicles that could park in a traditional garage, like a truck.
That is why I try to reverse INTO as many parking spots as I can, to reduce that danger. Highly advise you to do so as well.
@@stertheder It's company policy for many businesses that run vehicle fleets. Statistically much safer.
for most (older) cars you're totally right and idk about the real numbers, but just by my experience, there's cars, where parking and unparking is easier backwards. my volvo has a rela nice fish-eye-like backwards cam with beepy warning sensors and great side mirrors. when the spot is really narrow i much much prefer, going into it backwards. i see the sides of the car very well in the mirrors, and the alignment is easy with the camera.
Hearing Tom mumble "arigato gozaimasu" when they clipped the safety harness for him was really something special.
3:00 arigato gonzaimuns
What does it mean?
@@MrFootBallz Thank you but more respectful
@@MrFootBallz "thank you" i think
@@MrFootBallz it means "Thank you very much"
Tom really squeezed the most out of his -vacation- work trip to Japan to give us a look at so many interesting things there.
i like your profile picture, very colorful 👍
I think there are more coming because he met up with Chris Broad from Abroad in Japan and I assume we will get a video where we will see him :D Edit: I asked Chris in his last live stream and he said, that they didn't shot a video together because they couldn't think of anything in the short time :( but he would like to do next time
That’s the most British “Arigato gosaimas” I’ve ever heard. Also, I always wanted the concept of valley parking to go obsolete. Also, loved the video. Thanks for keeping them coming Tom :)
I was surprised by that accent 😂
I, too, thought about that. When they teach you the words why not follow their pronounciation, too? Every letter is spoken sharp, "a-ri-ga-to go-za-i-mas(u)" not "airy gato gosaymas".
@@AggressivelyLoving It's probably one of his rare interactions with the language (aside from words adopted into English) so give him a break.
@@AggressivelyLovingpeople usually take some time to adjust their pronounciation, its like asking "why dont the japanese just say R normally"
@@AggressivelyLoving Why do japanese people have accents when they speak in english? why dont they simply just copy the words exactly?
I love how the concept goes from interesting to cool to holy heck he’s climbing up inside a massive multi car battery
just like most of toms vids
Imagine your dad parks the car forgetting that you're napping in the backseat and you wake up in the minivan backrooms.
And with the doors locked! D:
@@georgedoty-williams2085 Car doors unlock from the inside...
@@griffinmckenzie7203 Not when it's turned off
@@georgedoty-williams2085 yes they do? front doors will always unlock if you pull the handle, even if the car is locked and alarm is on
@@georgedoty-williams2085 yes they can. Doors have a physical switch you can pull to unlock when there is no power. Also the battery power the unlock mechanism when the car is turned off.
What's most astounding to me is the speed and precision. Usually machines of this scale are only ever seen working this fast and efficiently in movies. I'd fully expect this platform to slow down to a crawl shortly before getting all the way down or up or even when turning.
Not necessarily. If done right its no issue at all. Just look at cnc machines, moving 1t of steel very quickly at precision beyond 0.01mm at a time.
I must admit it is nice to see things done faster than a snail. I hope at some point, things in space like docking, will be done faster too
I know, I was thinking the same thing. Then I remember this is 2023 now, about time somethings would become that fast.
That's because you're used to the English speaking world dominated by Americans, who always are about cutting costs to the bone and never improving past "good enough". Disappointing how far we've fallen.
I guess maybe you dont need to account for human safety tolerances, like accounting for whiplash and stuff? It's amazing hahaha
We definitely could use one of those bike ones here in the Netherlands! Everyone has a bike and sometimes even multiple and in the bigger cities they have become such a nuisance. They're in the way, they are dumped in the canals, stolen or just simply left abandoned. A garage like this would be such a great way to solve it!
I wish my city implemented this, but not being nearly as bike friendly as cities in Netherlands, this probably isn't even on the bottom of the list of my city's priorities. But I wonder why there are no installations in Netherlands. Is it maybe too expensive and the space isn't at such a premium as in Japan? Also, as it turns out, Giken's Europe offices are located in Almere and Berlin, but maybe these parks still aren't in focus for Europe branch?
We already have underground garages that house thousands of bikes, I don't think these automatic ones would have enough throughput for rush hour at a train station. It might be a good solution for less busy places though.
@@teslatrooper wait we do? Where? And why don't I know this? Rush hour at a average Randstad train station with these automated ones would definitely be a nightmare. Or... A even worse nightmare than it already is.
@@stijnfawkes Most train stations have one? Utrecht 12500 bikes, Amsterdam 7000, Haarlem 5000, Arnhem 4000 just a few that were easy to look up
@@ddelimar it is still fairly new, as the loacation count in the video indicates. it will probably eventually start rolling out internationally whenever that happens.
I would love to see the bike vaults at universities and event centres out here in Canada. Theft and damage is a genuine issue!
Giving everyone a free bike for every stolen bike is probably less expensive than this contraption.
As a dutch person I can tell you how we handle bike theft here. Simply we don't. Just make sure your bike isn't the most expensive looking one so other bikes will be stolen before yours does. If your bike is locked and looks like crap, it will not be stolen, most of the time at least.
In 9 parking space you might be able to fit 200 bikes but most likely 400 bikes (depending on the length of the space). You can hire a guard. This would be a lot cheaper then one of these system. The guard is most likely cheaper then the maintenance and running cost of those vaults. You can even make it so there is only one way in and one way out. When parked you get a ticket that you have to hand in again to get your bike. You still have a problem of damage. Hard to asses that one for me. Never worried about damage on my bike before. What is the worse then can be damaged? Nothing I think you can not carry a spare for if it is really a concern?
It takes me less than a minute to get your handle bars with the expensive shifters, using a small electric screw driver and s cable cutter. Depending on what you have that's a hundred quid damage in parts alone. Easily.
Not to mention inclement weather
This one was a LOT of fun to film! A lot of ladders, a lot of harnesses and a lot of fearing for my life as we stood inside these amazing machines while they operated.
Great to see Tom used 'local talent' 🙂
Super cool!
@@autohmae He's a babe like that
@@autohmae the quotation marks make that seem like a euphemism
Cool! Happy to hear from someone else that was there
The one for bikes looks awesome. To be able to securly store your bike, without needing to carry a heavy lock with you is amazing. Train stations and apartment buildings everywhere should have these
Completely agree. Just the fact that it's secure is a game-changer for security of the bikes! Theft is a huge issue and certainly reduces my frequency of cycling!
This is in Japan where you don't even need a bike lock
Their downside is bottlenecks and tech failures. For most places a walk-in building is more suitable, only a few places are dense enough that this is the right solution. That said, the world needs more safe bike parking, either this or manned bike parking.
The one for bikes seems like it actually wastes a ton of space. Look at how mass bike storage can work in the Netherlands, and this seems hilariously inefficient.
@@enju4013 Depends how deep you dig the storage. I'll also say that dense unpowered bike storage often uses a couple of levels and getting a heavy bike like my tourer onto an upper level rack after my commute is bloody awful.
having worked around heavy machinery even with guarding, terrifying is a fairly tame word to describe how scary where Tom stood was. There were probably very few if any safety features where he was and that lift wouldnt think twice about taking an arm.
I don't imagine it would think twice about taking approximately one _everything._
I don't imagine it would think
Safety features that might lock the system out if someone is servicing the underground equipment, or if someone sneaks in likely had to be disabled for this, if they exist.
The far more common design all over urban Japan (including the condo building where I live) is "tower parking", which is a tall square tower, where I'm told the cars rotate through it like a vertical carousel. (I've only seen them from the outside, but they are so narrow, that seems like the only possible way it could work.) But it is FAR slower than this unless your car happens to be close to the bottom when you ask for it. So although this spoked arrangement takes more space, every car can be accessed without moving any others, making it fast. It would be like choosing a specific song on a CD or record vs. on a cassette tape.
Accessing a specific song on a CD still requires it to move through everything before that to get to the physical position of the song on the disc, it can just move more quickly than a tape. This is more like accessing a song on an SD card or an SSD, where data can be accessed at any random location.
I've used those parking towers as well and generally they are just as fast as walking up to your car and driving it out yourself...
@@ArsenGaming move through everything? No. If it were to go though everything that'd be fast forwarding which they can also do. The laser that reads the cd slides on a track it can slide from the outside straight to the inside skipping over the entire middle without reading anything. The same way you can pick the needle up and place it anywhere on a record at whim. A tape is a straight line where as cds and records are spirals. You can jump side to side on discs to the next line of information but there's no shortcut on a tape. They were 100% correct.
@@ArsenGaming Sorry this is wrong. A CD arm moves over the disk surface to the beginning of the selected track, so ‘random’ access. Whereas tape is sequential access.
This really does sound like a good alternative to parking lots considering how much space the latter actually uses up
I very much doubt it's cost effective compared to a parking garage, this can only store eight cars per level. My guess is it's effectively a subsidy/jobs program.
Above ground parking lots have always been a terrible idea for space, but in most places an underground parking lot also means incurring additional operating expenses for water management.
@@sleepib It's every bit more cost effective than a typical parking lot. The amount of space that parking lots take which could have been used for productive buildings to make way more wealth is just way more
This doesn't need you to go into your vehicle and drive it out yourself, saving the space that would have been taken up by the driveway
The only issue is it probably costs more than a parking garage while only being able to store a fraction of the cars.
Not gonna lie Tom, this is by far and away the coolest engineering feat you've showcased in a while.
I'm glad you didn't lie. But why even mention it? Were you going to?
@@G5rry Who knows.. maybe he's normally a compulsive liar?
What I find coolest is that this is like, videogame level of engineering. Your standard industrial/sci-fi setting has all these extremely fast lifts and platforms that are huge, and in that setting they're just so normal that they're used to hide loading screens. "Oh, it's another gigantic lift that is rotating as it carries my character to the next level, granting the illusion of open world..." But this is actual engineering on that scale. It was so quick, and it moves a whole car!
I mean it's Japan... The Tech country itself..
@@cummiestcat Tech yes. Engineering also big in Japan. But I think Germany is ahead in engineering.
As Japan is around 70% mountainous, they're ingenious solutions to saving space have amazed me for years 😀. Just one of the many reasons why I love Japan
Bicycle version was by far the most interesting, wish I got to see more of how that mechanism worked.
I was surprised by that, I doubt they are as effective as just bicycle racks. Looked like very few bikes per square meter compared to what we have here in the Netherlands at any train station. Tidier, sure, but we have plenty of underground bike storage that seems to fit a LOT more bikes than this would. It seems like the cars is not even that much more efficient? You lose the required driveways etc, but cars parked sideways take less space than this circular construction.
@@chaozzah yea you’d think anyone could fit more bicycles on racks compared to this. Or in lock up areas
@@chaozzah To be fair, the Netherlands (Specifically Amsterdam and Copenhagen) is to Biking, what Akihabara is to Anime/Videogames! You guys have very good biking infrastructure. Lots of dedicated bike lanes, the snow actually gets plowed on those bike lanes, lots of areas to park your bike. I think I recall reading the Netherlands has more bikes then people. Japan is much more Walking centric, less people ride bikes there (Relative to the Netherlands) so capacity likely isn't as much of an issue. Something I am guessing though: Since Japan has a lot of earthquakes there is likely building regulations for underground structures that are expected to have people inside them. This automated system likely skirts those regulations.
@@chaozzah I think a massive benefit of these is deterring bike theft. Instead of having a "secure" indoor parking area/cage to lock up bikes, which involves humans (with good or bad intentions) going into these spaces, that opportunity to steal is completely removed.
@@LashanR no one will steal your bike in Japan, there is no need to, you can get one very easily and cheaply
There was one of these automatic car parking garages here in central Stockholm for 15+ years, P-Snurran. It shut down in 2019 after an electrical malfunction caused a load of cars to be stuck inside for several months until they could fix it. A mixture of difficulty in getting spare parts from the Italian parent company and a massive breakdown in trust from angry car owners led to it never reopening afterwards.
Whoa. Been in Stockholm for 11 years and even walked past it. TIL that it existed. Really bad mistake from the higher uppers, to not provision everything with redundancy... Perhaps even a mechanical slow-as-molasses winch backup...
Several months? WTF? That sound like incompetence.
MONTHS?!
Key words are: "Electrics" and "Italian company". If Italian electronics don't malfunction, it's not properly Italian😂
Wow, didn't know about this. I used to park my car in a garage built by what I understand was the same company (Trevi) in Cesena, Italy, and while it was a bit slow I always found it fascinating.
Honestly, the advantages of retrieving your vehicle without having to trudge around the parking area looking for it makes this seem a lot more user friendly than a traditional lot or rack. I hope they make a lot of these
The increase in security for your car alone makes me want one of these in my area. Crime's on the rise here unfortunately and although I don't have anything worth breaking into my car for, the problem therein lies the fact the thing getting stolen doesn't involve smashing a window to swipe. Imagine not having to worry about a $2K part not getting snatched from ya car in the night that you have no safe means of protecting 🙃
@@ItsADHDavy this was my immediate thought on the bike storage one. It's way too easy for someone to nick a bike from standard bike racks. One reason I love my folding bike is that I can fold it and loop the bike lock between multiple parts which hopefully discourages people from stealing it as it's much slower to ride off with
for me the main advantage is the fact that so much space isn't wasted by gigantic parking lots. obviously this machine (or building?) isn't anywhere near big enough to offset a properly big parking lot, but it's a start.
The only disadvantage I see is that only one can be retrieved at a time, meaning it's possible there will be a line to get your bike.
@@4547466 There should be a storage rack or a track outside to park a couple of bikes on. You could then request the bike when you are 30 seconds away and it will be ready. Similar, you could just park the bike outside, and an operator would put it in the machine for you so you didn't have to wait.
Japan yet again amazes me with their incredibly high tech solutions to modern problems. Awesome video
“Tesla promised this but obviously never delivered” I love this Tesla diss hahaha
Holy cow, the speed on those things is incredible. 25 seconds from request to car delivery is amazing.
If you can request the car from 30 seconds away, and have it ready outside when you are ready it essentially is immediate delivery.
but still to some frequent parking lot at some specific time there could be a lot of traffic
0:26 They seem to've opted for building more of them, there were 3 for the bikes in close proximity. For cars they could do an oval one where it stores/retrieves 3 cars at once or something, with a single moving arm thingie and it could do both actions per descend, retrieve one while it stores 2.
much faster than a parking lot where they keep your keys and a human goes to your car and drives it to you!
I love how Japan manages to make their high tech look so aesthetic as well
I too love watching a million dollars spent to save a $1 issue. Bravo. Totally not anything to do with grafting or kickbacks.
@@TheBelrick how is a lack of parking a $1 issue?
Just look at their trains and you know how much they love building and making things.
Also the cars inside this thing are immaculately clean. It seems like somebody took some preparation.
@@TheBelrick Lack of land space in a city is not a $1 issue.
the Evo X wagon in the last shot was dope
I've used semi automated parking for some years, and it works fine, but when everyone is trying to get out at the same time, cycle rate becomes very important. This is much faster, and doesn't rely on terrible human drivers backing out of some super tight corner and garage door. I want this.
Until you forget to fold your mirrors in one time
I don't know, if you can only have one car moving in the vault at a time then that strikes me as having a much lower throughput as the entry/exit to traditional parking.
Which does bring up the value of how many cars these structures should be allowed to support. At some point the throughput would become an issue and you'd need more than one.
@@davidmcgill1000 The maker's site says it takes 32 seconds on average to retrieve one car. These installations can handle 50 cars each (standard spec). So. Almost 2 cars/minute. About 26 minutes to full empty to 100% usage. Let's say 30 minutes? Not too bad, since it's really unusual to everybody arrive at exactly the same time. Even at work: we arrive at slightly different times - and I don't think it's the typical use case going to 100% empty to 100% full in one go. There should be some spare capacity available.
plus if you'rea regular at one of these, you can theoretically plan ahead and distribute the load to multiple of these parking spots. Oncoming shift split roughly evenly, then departing shift split evenly. Departing shift usually can't leave before their relief is there after all
"Culture above aground, function underground" hits so hard -- what a fantastic way of approaching these problems. As a North American I really wish the people in control here viewed things this way
Tesla couldn't even manage self charging, the Japanese as usual are light years in front.
well Space isnt that much of a issue in NA.
I agree. The biggest deterrent though is it Costs more to excavate.
@@catinusz.4741 True, although culture has often been lost and demolished to make way for function, especially for cars, in Northern America. So sharing a similar principle of maintaining culture while also having function is somehting missing
@@catinusz.4741 we told ourselves that and ended up with overly stretched, unwalkable sprawl
A rental car service like this would be insanely cool. Effectively zero-maintenance in the case of electric vehicles
Personally, I think one of the best uses for these would be at airports, train stations, cruise terminals, etc. as a means of securely storing your car while hundreds if not thousands of miles away on vacation or something. Doing something like that would make loads of room for more runways and gates at airports, more tracks and platforms at train stations, more or larger piers at cruise terminals, etc. by making use of vertical construction to save horizontal land space in areas typically dominated by horizontal construction. I could be wrong about a lot of things here and I’m sure there are challenges I haven’t considered, but this is just my 2 cents on these pieces of mechanized beauty:)
Thing is, with long term travel like airports/cruises you could compromise on speed in exchange for storage efficiency. Your structure could be a cube and use something like a conveyor belt to move the vehicle sleds instead of a circle and spokes. Then vehicles could be lined up several cars deep, one in front of another. When you park, you set an expected return date. Gone for two weeks? It could bury your car behind 5 others for 13 days, and the night before you return, it does some tetris to move your car to the quick-grab stalls. Maybe even have a clever FIFO system that automatically sorts cars as they arrive so they get picked up more or less in order at the other end. Plans change? The mobile app could pre-retrieve your car. I would rush to patent this, but self driving and "self parking" cars might beat me to the punch. A regular parking garage could be much more efficient if they parked themselves.
It's crazy when you think about the amount of engineering that went into this, especially when you consider it has to handle lot of different car designs and how things could potentially go wrong if it fail.
Seeing how close the car came to touching the platform above it had me clenching everything. But presumably, it has all sorts of sensors and probably redundancy built in so even if one fails, the car can still be stored safely. I do wonder if things like custom mods or additions of, say, a bike rack on the tow hitch or a cargo rack on the top might screw up the robot.
@@animeartist888 I bet they scan/sensor the hell out of it before it even goes down. Also seems there's a person there to double check, and likely ensure no one is still in the vehicle.
@@Demonslay335 you can see some of the sensors highlighted at 1:52 looks like it is some sort of light curtain that they are sensing if the car fits within a boundary box...if it didn't fit the elevator wouldn't run assuming the car doesn't change size or height (active suspension raising the ride height or something silly like that) scanning it at the start should be sufficient for safety
Because they lost World War II, Japan doesn't produce many military products; therefore, they need something to keep their engineers busy.
@@animeartist888 the cars are scanned for shape and size before it eats them. If the vehicle doesn't fit inside the required profile it's rejected. Japan typically don't have wide cars, and systems like these - no matter if they're Japanese or whatever - are normally built to handle the most common cars for the area where they're set up
2:27 all I heard was “dude I know”
I really learned something from the charging garage. Its actually something I always thought of as a human would need to do intervention, as my exposure has been to Tesla's with their button press on charger end to open the charging door. The way you described it makes real sense, that you plug the car into the platform its parked on while the car is in human-land, and the platform then plugs into the power source when its in the garage. Thank you for showing these to us!
Japan really has all the technology lark figured out, crazy how many innovations they seem to have at the ready that would've been deemed an impossibility not all that long ago
3:00 arigato gozimis
We have this in Aarhus, Denmark! One thing that this video doesn't address is that parking your car takes a few minutes (especially if you're new), so in a busy area, you will create a waiting line, if there's only 1 booth. So we have multiple booths (I think 8 or 10) for the same underground facility, so people can park and pickup in good speed.
I recommend watching the video, where they say it can be as fast as 25 seconds
@@kaukospots That’s likely the cycle time of the machine. There’s probably stuff you need to do on the surface when you drop the car off and pick it up (like paying)
@@mrb692 I recon, those being Japan, that paying could be done automatically or using a wireless card like the do on trains, that is really fast and convenient. Also, parking in and taking about don't seem to be difficult as they're automatically turned to get out from the frknt
@@_Darkaeluz See, you say that, but Japan is somewhat notorious for mixing things like That... with still using fax machines, floppy disks, and shops that only take cash. (the floppy disks, at least are being phased out at last.) ... Mind you, I'll take shops that only take cash over shops that Don't take cash... Oh, and the joys of ATMs that are Inside the Bank and thus close when the bank does (or, if I remember rightly, sometimes actually Earlier.) But also vending machine almost everything (well, perhaps not in any one place, but still). It's a real mixed bag on the tech front. Lots of things stagnated after the big tech boom back in the... I want to say 80s? other things quite obviously did not.
@@laurencefraser I mean... if I recall correctly, America hasn't been using credit cards with chips on them until recently. A lot of developed countries have quirky behaviours like this.
Japan really does have a vending machine for everything. Amazing! I like the efficiency and well thought out use of the limited space.
this is such an incredible innovation. I've seen other versions around online, little clips here and there, but gotta give a big thanks to both you and the team at GIKEN for giving us all such a close view of how it all works, and how their systems do it all. also I could feel that fear when you were at the bottom of the car parking, that came down so impressively fast, and that's gotta get your heart racing up close like that!
I've always thought it was weird that Tom didn't make more videos in Japan since they have so much weird and cool stuff.
Japan was sealed off to outsiders for about 2 years during the pandemic. They opened up the borders properly at the start of 2023.
He surely built up enough videos for the next few months after spending some time there.
There are also plenty of videos for Japan at the same time. So I assume it is not really easy to found a topic that is not reported to death already.
@@ohredhk Very true, yet Tom has managed to find some topics that match his idiosyncratic style and keep them interesting to even jaded Japanese like me.
It is still a very long way from the UK; the fact he's making a big Pacific tour right now might suggest he's not interested in disrupting his life for so much intercontinental travel.
As someone who is studying Traffic engineering and planning, this is amazing to me. The car garage is interesting just because of its size and speed, it looks so easy how it moves those massive cars around. But what really amazes me is the bike storage. It's safer than any other bike storage facility I can think of, because you can't break in, it takes up a lot less space which is valuable. It just looks like a genuinely good Idea. This should be a worldwide thing! Easy to use and safe.
as others have commented the bike storage can be an issue with throughput. The bike took 7 seconds to be stored. Make that 10 seconds for some additional overhead between customers. This means you have 6 bikes being stored/retrieved per minute. This works in an area where people are spread out over their usage. But at a public transport hub you will have people wanting to pick up or drop off their bikes in big batches. A train could easily arrive with 100 people wanting to pick up their bike in the same minute. The solution needs to be either a lot more complex. Where multiple robots can access the same storage space or you need to stick to small bike storage facilities to spread out the bikes over multiple facilities. And than you might lose the space advantage. It is very interesting to see, but to make a general solution for bike storage (where biking is common) it needs to be able to handle big spikes in usage (big group of people arriving/leaving a train or a sport match)
This machine costs 7 figures for a very limited amount of bikes…. And i don’t think anyone would pay for bike storage
@@ES-xq7iu I would spend money on bike storage if it would be convenient for my daily use, but the point you are trying to make still stands: The amount of money I am willing to spend is less then cost of building + maintenance divided by number of customers; and it can not be fixed by scaling up the system. I also do not like subsidizing parking (cars or bicycles) as I prefer walkabilty and public transport (which can be subsidized; even the biggest car fans would prefer to have as many people as possible on the rail and thus of the streets)
I doubt bike security is such a big issue in Japan; they simply don't have a lot of crime there.
@@sarowie paying to store bikes is a horrible idea. Biking should stay as a free safe clean way of transport, using a large heavy machine to store your bike and paying for it? That's the opposite of what we should do.
Those are some adrenaline-enducing shots! Videos like this remind me how much I don't want you to stop making videos. I know you want to, and I get it. I don't want this to be a chore for you... but WOW your videos always show me something completely amazing.
Did he say he wants to stop, he makes a living doing cool stuff
Props Japan, you have once again genuinely impressed me. A complete stranger.
The ingenuity, practicality and quirkiness of Japanese engineering and ideas is always something that fascinated me.
Well, this one is quite practical. But the best thing about Japanese engineering is sometimes they put more effort to things that are not practical, but when you look at it, and think "I wish I have that"
@@li_tsz_fung or when it IS practical and reasonable but cannot be done because of rotting current infrastructure around
Might be weird to say, but I feel like "Japanese Engineering" is quickly becoming the engineering powerhouse "German Engineering" used to be.
I also love the company thinking that the bicycle storage not being _that interesting_ and then showing Tom the underground car parking system, but they also have a tower for electric cars. It is a quirky product for very specific use cases; but they know how to show off their product. I mean, the tower could be its own tourist attraction. Sure, for borrowing bikes to tourist there would be more effective ways, but... if you can convince someone to cycle around town by putting up a show, why not?
I was there in 2001 and they had car elevators. These are a little more advanced. The ones back then were just a tall structure with a belt that went in a circle and you drove onto.
This would be excellent for theme parks and resorts. Suddenly everyone can park near the actual destination.
You'd just need about 100 of those (bottleneck!?) and the guests can pay for all of that. Actually a rather horrible idea if you ask me.
I didn't even think of that! That's an excellent idea! Granted, they'd need storage for way more than this number of cars/bikes for something like Disney or even the local fairgrounds at a decent sized city, but the more of them you have, the faster you can process through a line. And those places already charge you for parking, so it really wouldn't be that big of a change.
Theme parks are usually out of the way and don’t need machines like this for space concerns. For guest comfort it’s much cheaper and easier to do a shuttle bus or something from the far end of the parking lot. For urban theme parks that for some reason want to stuff more parking around, why not. But those can easily just piggy-back on the public parking facilities that city already has within comfortable walking or public transport range.
@@jamaly77 not at all. Most people would spend much more than 25 seconds looking for parking. Seems like a solid solution to me. A few of these outside each entrance and it would open up even more space for additional theme park!
I live in Tokyo and have been commuting regularly to a maternity hospital located in a tall building. I drive down a ramp into the tiny parking area in the basement, enter one of two portals by driving straight in. I get a ticket from the attendant and walk away. The car moves out of sight to the right and then lowers down. When I am finished I give the attendant my ticket, he pushes some keys and my car shows up in the second portal turned around and facing so I can just drive out. The attendant told me they can park over 200 vehicles. EVERYONE parks as conveniently as if they were in a handicapped spot. Really an amazing experience at no more cost to me than a pay parking lot anywhere else in the city. Bonus: You're always out of the weather.
That EV charging bit was brilliant. It shows how thinking can be boxed in too, because like Tom, I was trying to think of some crazy way to plug in to the car, not just connecting a circuit somewhere deeper in the line.
There's a huge parking robot garage in Aarhus in Denmark. One of the biggest in Europe I believe. It's underneath a really cool building, with a tramline running under it, bicycle high-ways, and on top it has the townhall and the library. Worth checking out!
Yes, and with multiple gates so that multiple cars can be recived or delivered at the same time.
i REALLY appriciate the speed of the automation here, in so many cases things move at a crawl and then wait for several seconds inbetween actions, this just moves and i love it!
I am living in Japan and have always wondered what these look from the inside and how they work. Thank you for this video!
The way you present the information is phenomenal. I completely forgot I was learning about suped up parking garages
Super souped up.
It's worth to mention that despite this company having only few locations of underground parking for cars this stuff is crazy popular around the country and you can find these parking's everywhere
Have you never watched Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol? It ends in a garage that has the same idea behind it: a machine that parks your car at a place a human could never reach, and that also brings your car back when you need it again
I have to think that this is one of, if not my favorite video you've put out. I love seeing futuristic innovation, because I can just imagine the future where this is the norm.
This is awesome. Just being able to park a bicycle without the risk of it being stolen, or parts taken from it, or for cars having their catalytic converters ripped off, is a huge win. That it can charge electric vehicles and be placed underground are bonuses.
and the bike is also nicely protected from the weather outside
To be fair things like bikes simply don't get stolen in Japan. And social policies like walkable cities that correlate with improved community cohesion and quality of life for everyone also tend to reduce the rates of petty crime around the world.
Hello, American👋😂
@@Captain__Obvious Ironically, bicycle theft is very common in Japan with bicycles and umbrellas both being subject to being stolen fairly frequently.
I rented a bicycle for an hour at a hotel in Tokyo in 1984. No lock for the bike. The streets were empty, a Sunday, so I ended up using the bike for 5 hours. I ate at restaurants, went shopping. Hanging my purchases from the handle bars. It was amazing to not have the bike or my purchases stolen in such a large city. It felt like a safe NYC. Of in NY the bike would have disappeared in 5 minutes or less when unattended.
Benefits of mono culture. I did not have lock in my bike in Sweden 1970. Now stolen bicycle is the least of your worries.
These days, it would've been stolen _while you were still riding on it._
@@TimoNoko cultural enrichment at its finest
Bike theft is actually quite common in Japan these days.
Once again, thanks to Tom and the production team for their second English dub track and full quality subtitles. The additional effort to support those of us with hearing deficiencies is noticed and appreciated 👍
Tom Scott has the most extraordinary awesome job visiting and educating people about so many innovations old and new. Also all the research, travel, production and editing by Tom and his amazing team.
Robot parking towers are everywhere here in and around Seoul and I assume they are common elsewhere in the world as well but having them underground is 100% a more elegant use of space.
Do they have clearly visible and automatically tested limits on all the dimensions of the car?
@@Suranfox There’s a guy operating it and the slots for each vehicle is very large, plus we don’t have ridiculous american trucks so size is rarely a problem
Car companies have almost zero competition in north america, they don’t feel like they have to implement the latest technology : (
@@Shoob__ I drive a Dacia Dokker for it's 2.5m³ cargo space. European sized but I can easily see my truck over all the other parked cars in a lot and some underground garages get tight at the end of a ramp.
I love it when companies do this with KZheadrs, this sort of thing should be done more often.
There was one of these in Stockholm, Sweden between 2003 and 2019. After a power outage the car lift stopped working, and 18 cars got stuck in there for 6 months before an engineering team from the manufacturer in Italy could get there and replace a broken part. The parking garage (named Snurran) has been abandoned for the last four years and will probably be demolished.
I think the engineering behind all of this is absolutely incredible!!! Great Video Tom.
There's a parking structure below a high-rise building in Seattle, WA that has three elevators which function similar to this but with tracks throughout that the cars ride along once parked in the elevator cab. I am a fire protection inspector and we have to go down amongst the equipment for regular maintenance, it's really amazing to be below while the machines are operating!
How concerned are you about fire risks with that? Especially if electric vehicles are being stored, too?
well i guess there is noone inside - so seal it on top, burn the cars an noone dies but maybe thats not hoe fires work, I‘m no expert
Which building is that? I kinda want to try this out next time I need to park downtown.
@@reed6514 It is all relative. Consider other industrial scale production sites.
Honestly, just the concept of "fast dimensional changing moving platforms for large machinery" is kind of the attraction for me, as this is the kind of stuff Thunderbirds promised that seemed doable but I haven't seen it done quite like this before. Just scale it up for Thunderbird 1, and make bigger pod storage for TB2.
Thank you for letting us see what's inside and how smooth it all moves!
I love that company's slogan. Perfectly concise!
The slogan "Culture aboveground, function underground" for some reason made me so emotional, I burst into tears 🥲
Japan is awesome with things like this. And it's so cool that they offered you to go down there and film from any angle
Depends on where you live n Japan. Tokyo-to (Prefecture) has a GDP that rivals some countries. Within Tokyo, Minato-ku (Minato city) is one of the wealthiest parts and they can afford to build such places. These kinds of car parks are unfortunately not that common and typically they do not accommodate larger vehicles such as SUVs, 4X4s and mini-vans. All of which are the most popular type of ordinary vehicle (kei cars are a different category) here in Japan.
@@andrewjones-productions If you are in Tokyo, why would you own a car? They have the best train transportation, webbed around Tokyo area.
@@jnfunvufb it doesn't matter if there's a reason or not A lot of people clearly do have cars in Tokyo and that's all that matters
It's also surprising how many people in Japan have underground parks at home, with a lift that allows a second car to be parked above while another sits below. So cool. Thanks for covering this team.
I mean that is Japan after all, if you even want a car there, you need to have documents to prove you have a place on private property to store the car when its not used, to make sure it doesn't take away space on the public street.
I visited a friend that had a bottom rack, and it took 15 minutes to park! The lifts have to be slow for safety purposes, and the width and length were super tight, haha.
@@drdewott9154 Woah! Interesting.
These are used in Germany as well to some extend. Although I wouldn't call it common.
my flat in tokyo when i was a child had one of those
fantastic video as always. pure class in how you handled yourself and the company that gave you access. 10/10
so cool. thanks for introducing this to us, tom! love this japan arc, tom!
The idea for cars is really cool for areas where you need to park a car for longer periods of time. But because there’s only one way in and out for the cars, if it’s a heavily trafficked area, there could be backlogs for people wanting to retrieve or store their cars. Either way, this is still really cool and I’d love to see it implemented outside of Japan.
It seems to take about one minute to store or retrieve. I think even for medium traffic this is decent.
It'll be just like a fast food drive through except your car disappears underground in the middle without you in it.
if you build at least 2 next to each other, you could have a guidance system in place, that would alternate between both on a 5 minute cycle. 5 minutes in, 5 minutes out. Worst case, you'd wait 10 minutes, which is about the time it would take for you to get your car from a normal parking garage including walking over, paying, etc. since you only need to drive straight in or out, you take really no time looking for a free spot, which makes it very fast and efficient time-wise...
Build two interfaces, one for parking, one for picking up. After parking your car, you can walk away immediately. If some asks to pick up their car at the same time, the robot can pick it up while coming back up, instead of coming up empty. For every car being parked, one can be picked up again. It doesn't seem to take too long, either.
I mean they said they could retrieve in as little as 25 seconds right? So I'm sure in a busy area they'd be hitting 25 second retrievals and likely have it being more like a drive *through* than a pull in/back out situation.
I live in Japan at the moment and always wondered what these looked like inside! You're doing God's work 😂
Do you think you could hide in the car and go inside it? I'm very curious and wonder if anyone's ever tried to go into one like that. It could be a youtube challenge 😆
@@wecirclethesky probably people have tried it but you personally don't actually drive the car onto the panel I don't think. The staff do, so they would do a quick check of any stowaways
@@wecirclethesky how American is that? or, don't make it a "youtube challenge". keep the nice thing nice. stop giving people incentive to do crazy stuff. smh
@@kalui96 100% Shootdang daggone American! 🤣
@@wecirclethesky you remember those kids opening stuff in grocery stores, taking a bite out of it or spitting in it, and running off? I think it was tiktok or snap. that trend made its way to Japan. I'm sure you have seen the video of the kids doing that in some sushi place. no, it's not directly Americans' fault. but the origins can be traced back to their ratchet activities
I appreciate the subtle digs at car dependency. 'To solve this problem we can either create expensive mechanical marvels that stack cars. Or, y'know, just make public transit good.'
this is genuinely one of the coolest things I've ever seen, thank you for the video!
As an engineer, the main set back outside of costs is the moving parts. They tend to break now and then. Even if it only breaks once a month, a few times a year where you cannot access your bike or car for hours is really annoying. Besides maintenance would most likely shut down operation as well. Still an amazing project worth pursuing, even if it will mostly stay as an attraction for niche situations
You can minimise it with frequent, regular maintenance at night I suppose. Japan also employs predictive maintenance for their rail, trying to catch faults before they happen, which they can apply to this too if it's high traffic.
As an engineer one time per month is little? That is bad engineering if you cannot maintain something without breaking so often.
@@DragN_H3art Night maintenance is a good point!
@@pulsar9354 It doesn't break in the traditional sense. There are safety features on all robotic machines. The system shuts it down as soon as there is any indication of something not working properly. We have this robotic storage units system nearby. Around once a week the system shuts down and someone has to come check it out. Can be as simple as a little stone being stuck somewhere it shouldn't be.
Businesses in the US don’t like to spend money on maintenance. They only do it if they are forced to by government regulations or recently had a financial loss that was greater than cost of maintenance.
Depending on the operating and upkeep/maintenance costs, these are absolutely revolutionary. I'd love to see a long term cost comparison between one of these and a large cement/concrete parking garage.
they really aren't though... If they get installed everywhere it will just induce demand and there will be twice the number of cars off the road as usual.
Revolutionary is a strong word for this type of vehicle storage which has, in various forms and levels of automation, existed for well over a century.
@@TheEclecticDyslexic This is a really bad way to look at it. Reducing the footprint that parked cars take up in the city is only a good thing. There isn't an infinite amount of humans to drive cars, it's not like car usage will suddenly balloon up just because there are more parking spaces... I'd rather the streets not be covered in parked vehicles on the sides, and there not being lots of real-estate that could have been used for apartments be used for parking garages. As the world moves towards electric vehicles and energy production becomes more green, the issue of people driving becomes moot.
@@invertexyz Especially when you consider places without parking that dedicate spaces for it. Imagine a mall with no parking lots, a city hub with no multi level parking spaces, because these hubs replace the need for them.
@@invertexyz But that's the thing. There will be. It's a well-established phenomenon. When you make it more convenient to drive, more people take more trips and congestion returns to previous levels, if not worse. If you want to get cars out of an area, you should reduce parking and improve transit and accessibility for bikes, pedestrians, etc. not try to pack more cars in.
Frighteningly good video,Tom, and amazed by the tech - I always like to see steel put together like this; I loved my meccano as a boy !
This Japan series is nothing short but awesome!
i like how at 4:30 the doors open at the same time the car gets released from the wheel roller thingies. makes it look like your car has spawned à la video games.
That’s genuinely really cool 😂 and the fact that all the machinery is so quiet and fluid shows how well it was designed
A few weeks ago, I watched one of those retrofuturistic videos from the sixties that advertised a parking garage similar to this. I thought, "hah, it's so funny what they thought we'd have in the future," having no idea that this does actually exist. This is so cool!
Reminds me of the way you store the spaceships at stations in Elite Dangerous, very cool!
do you have a clip of that?
@@astrobot3000 Should be plenty if you look it up, it's really quite similar, except for the fact that the ship stays on the platform it initially landed on, and a new platform is sent up for the next ship, instead of the ship being dropped off somewhere.
3:21: "Tesla were teasing that many years ago. Obviously, they never delivered." Officer, I'd like to report a drive-by murder.
I remember using a much older one these garages in southern France and was fascinated by it. I always wanted to know how it worked. You have just answered a question which has been on my mind for 30 years😂. You get the best jobs. Thank you for solving this👍
You have the most interesting videos, and they don't take forever to watch them. One of my very favorite KZheadrs.
I’d want Tom to be at Tokyo for months on end just to see what kind of videos he make about all the contraptions and devices unique there
Please stay in Japan and do more videos there. Miss that place so much, I was always amazed by those robotic garages, glad to see how they work in detail! Thanks Tom!
I really hope this video is a big success for you Tom. It's really neat!
Such a cool concept and incredibly well excecuted - there’s a few of these in New York City as well due to the lack of parking space
Cant wait for these to get commonplace enough that movies start to have set pieces built around these. I know Mission Impossible did something like that, but i feel like you could do so much more with these.
I love how he casually teleports around Japan like nothing is happening 😄
Tom is an enigma
They gave you some really awesome video angles. That's a great group of people to work with.
A similar system is acually in place in Wolfsburg (GER). It's called the Volkswagen Autostadt (CarCity) and they store cars like that in a much higher tower before delivering them to the customers. You can even book a trip to have a visit in the tower...
I'm so happy Tom has got to travel about and especially visit Japan in this last year of weekly videos !
Tom Scott climbs into a giant robot. We should have seen it coming when he started releasing videos from Japan.
3:00 Tom saying "arigatougozaimasu" has made my day somehow.
I am always excited when a new Tom video shows up in my feed. Never disappoints. That was massively cool
I tried one of those types of car garages in Copenhagen last week. Really cool experience, though it did have a higher footprint than the garages in the video.
Tom's videos in Japan are absolutely incredible! This one especially is amazingly futuristic :O