Automated automobile parking

Abstract

This invention defines a facility that accepts and mechanically parks automobiles. The facility is a group of adjacent bays; each bay is one car wide, has a ground floor that provides access and egress to entrance and delivery portals, and has multiple levels of storage above (or below) the ground floor. Each storage level of each bay has four storage stalls, two longitudinally forward of and two longitudinally behind a central elevator shaft. Vehicles are stored on pallets; there is a pallet for every storage stall. A single-wide or multiple-wide elevator operates within the elevator shaft of each bay or group of bays. The elevators are double-deck; the upper deck is a temporary storage stall, and the lower deck is the basic transport floor. Horizontal travel of pallets is accomplished by gearmotor-driven pinions in all stalls that mesh with toothed racks on the undersides of the pallets.

1 ) An improved system of mechanically accepting, storing and returning automobiles to their drivers; the system is housed in a facility where drivers park their vehicles on pallets in a ground floor access area; the palletized vehicles are longitudinally moved onto a longitudinally-oriented elevator and lifted to an available storage level and longitudinally moved into storage until the driver calls for his/her vehicle, at which time the procedure is reversed and the car delivered back to the driver.  
   
   
       2 ) The building of  claim 1  is composed of side-by-side bays, each bay being one car wide, five car-lengths long, and of a height that includes a ground floor access and multiple levels of storage above or below the ground floor; the five car-length bay length consists of a central elevator gallery and on the storage levels, two storage stalls forward of and two storage stalls rearward of the elevator shaft of each bay; the storage stalls of each level of each bay are referred to as inboard (adjacent to the elevator shaft) and outboard (not adjacent to the elevator shaft).  
   
   
       3 ) The ground access floor of the building of  claim 1  has access and exit driveways located inside the structure under the outboard storage stalls, along with entrance portals into which drivers place their vehicles and exit portals from where drivers retrieve their vehicles; these entrance and exit portals are under the inboard storage stalls described in  claim 2  and adjacent to the elevator shaft.  
   
   
       4 ) Elevators operate in the elevator gallery of the building of  claim 1;  the elevators are double-deck in design with the lower deck being the basic vertical transport deck and the upper deck being a temporary storage deck.  
   
   
       5 ) The elevators of  claim 4  may be single-wide, double-wide, or triple-wide, based on a pre-defined elevator-to-storage stall ratio that addresses both apportioning the cost of the elevator mechanism and timeliness of serving the customers who will use the parking facility; double-wide or triple-wide elevators serve adjacent bays which are independent in construction but are operated as a single entity.  
   
   
       6 ) The elevator decks, the entrance and exit portals, and all the storage stalls of the building of  claim 1  are equipped with longitudinally-running rails  
   
   
       7 ) Every pallet of the facility of  claim 1  is equipped with wheels on its underside and these wheels run in or on the rails of  claim 6;  the underside of every pallet is also equipped with a longitudinal toothed rack that is the receiver of power that makes the pallet move when such is called for  
   
   
       8 ) Every storage stall, every entrance portal, every exit portal, and both decks of every elevator is equipped with an imbedded power unit between the rails as described in  claim 6;  the power unit is a gearmotor-driven pinion; the teeth of the pinion mesh with the toothed rack of the pallets of  claim 7   
   
   
       9 ) The power units of  claim 8  are spring-mounted to prevent tooth damage of the pinion teeth or rack teeth; when the pinions of a delivering and a receiving gearmotor driver are not in synchronization, the receiving driving unit will depress and the teeth of the pinion gear will ride on the tooth tops of the pallet rack; when the delivering gearmotor pinion loses tooth contact at the end of the pallet rack and stops pushing it along, the receiving gearmotor pinion's continuing rotation will cause its teeth to advance and its teeth will rise into the dedendum of the rack teeth, at which time the pallet will again be powered and advance.  
   
   
       10 ) The parking facility of claim I allows cars to be parked in both the inboard (directly accessible to the elevator) storage stalls, and in the outboard or indirectly-accessible storage stalls; storage or retrieval of pallets in the outboard storage stalls is accomplished by temporarily moving the inboard-stored pallet onto the upper deck of the elevator serving that bay, retrieving the outboard pallet onto the elevator's lower deck, and then replacing the temporarily-stored pallet in the elevator's upper deck back to the storage level from which it was temporarily taken.  
   
   
       11 ) The operation of the facility as described in  claim 1  is based on available computer-related software that is available to measure correct car placement in parking, safe retreat of the driver and his/her passengers, actuate the horizontal and vertical mechanisms that puts a car in storage and arranges for its return, and attends to the charging of the fee for the parking; said computer logic sequencing is not a part of this patent.