An automated car parking system which is claimed by its supplier to be the first of its kind in the Southern Hemisphere has been installed on a luxury high-rise tower in Sydney.

German headquartered logistics supplier Lödige Industries says it has installed a fully autonomous multi-level car park facility at ‘The Lennox’ high-rise development in Sydney’s Parramatta District.

Completed in November 2021, the 149-metre building has a total of 46 floors and 6,300 square meters of space.

In addition to 414 apartments, the complex features a fitness studio, Zen Garden, community function room, indoor pool and a concierge service.

Using Lödige Industries’ robotic ‘CUBILE’ technology, the building’s nine-level basement combines three levels of conventional parking with six additional levels for the automated parking system, with capacity for 327 vehicles.

With a payload of up to 2.5 tonnes per vehicle, the system can handle all common cars and SUVs.

Essentially, users drop off their vehicle at one of a total of five transfer cabins.

From this point everything is automatic. The transfer cabin’s gate closes and the car is transported to the parking level, from there, it is moved by flat robots, the ‘Lödige Shifter’ onto a horizontal transfer vehicle and delivered to a free parking space. Here the robots once again lift the vehicle by its tyres and move it into the parking space.

Just as with drop-off, users simply need to pick up their vehicle from the transfer cabins.

Instead of parking their car, users simply drop their vehicle off at one of five transfer stations.

All storage processes are monitored by the company’s system software, which calculates the most efficient parking positions as well as access and departure routes for the cars.

All up, the company says 90 vehicles can be parked or retrieved per hour, with pick-up times of around two minutes.

To pick up their vehicle, users use a phone app.

In addition to providing convenience for customers, Lödige says the system delivers the most efficient use of space and enables up to 60 percent more cars can be placed in the same space in comparison to conventional parking structures.

The efficient space use also meant that the automated parking levels required less than 15m excavation.

In light of the sedimentary rock in the area, this enabled significant cost savings in the excavation along with a reduced building impact.

For Lödige, the latest project represents part of its push to broaden its present in the Australian market, in which it is targeting automated parking systems as well as in automated freight handing systems at air-handling cargo terminals.

In Europe, the company is responsible for delivering the continent’s largest automated parking system in Aarhus (Denmark), which has space for 1,000 vehicles.