Slashdot Mirror
Robotic Garage Pulls a HAL, Chomps On Cars
coondoggie writes "Somewhere HAL is smiling. Reports out of Hoboken, NJ today say an automated parking garage robotic system went a little nutty this week, trapping a driver and his pooch inside. According to reports it's not the first time the system has had issues with its car constituents. According to the Jersey Journal, a Honda Civic was scraped along its right side when it became trapped on a pallet and sank two feet under the garage floor last spring."
(robotic laugh) Ah. Ah. Ah. Ahhh.
A friend of mine was working in Hoboken right around the corner from that garage and it's had software glitches and problems for years. Like put in your beautiful BMW come back later and get presented with a Mini Cooper. The cops were being called at least once a day (sometimes more) due to these types of problems. There also was a story here on SlashDot a couple years ago about this same garage where the city didn't pay their maintenance fee to the company that wrote the software and without a renewal key the software automatically shut the garage down and no one could get their cars. The city didn't want to pay and the company wouldn't budge and there was a big legal mess but cars were stuck in there for at least several days until it was resolved.