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Hoboken, NJ vs. Giant Parking Robot

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the their-mouths-are-still-moving dept.

markwalling writes "Wired News is running a story about Hoboken, New Jersey's battles with robotic parking. A legal battle over the license had shut down the garage, essentially trapping hundreds of cars inside. Bill Coats has recommended that the parking garage be run off open source software: 'Vendees are going to become more sophisticated in the deals they enter into.' Coats even sees this as a driver of open source software. 'If you can get (open source software) you can't be shut down.' But that's harder to do in highly custom applications."

3 of 379 comments (clear)

  1. Re:A who did what to who? by qbwiz · · Score: 4, Informative

    Robots are controlled by computers, with software. The city used to have a license for the software to operate the robots. Now they don't, so they can't operate the robots to remove the cars. If the software was open source, they would still have the license for it, so they could still use the robots.

    --
    Ewige Blumenkraft.
  2. Re:Thievery by Timesprout · · Score: 4, Informative

    The fee was decided in arbitration after the city apparently thought they could pull a fast one on a contract they had agreed to and ended up shooting themselves in the foot.

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    Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
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  3. Re:Pictures? by LordKronos · · Score: 4, Informative

    Heres another site with some animations showing how it works:
    http://www.robopark.com/

    Looking at the site you posted, it looks like the cars are stacked on top each other, with nothing in between (or if there is anything, you can't see it. I'd sure hate to have someone's clunker dripping oil onto my windshield.