HL Mando completes Parkie’ demonstration project

[Courtsy of HL Mando Corp.]

South Korea’s HL Mando Corp., the company behind the world‘s first autonomous parking robot ‘Parkie,’ recently conducted a highly confidential test at Korean mobile carrier KT Corp’s Pangyo office building to explore the parking robot’s commercialization potential.

HL Mando is actively seeking cooperation opportunities with leading Korean companies, including KT, as the unmanned parking robot, which is equipped with autonomous driving technology, is expected to emerge as a new future growth engine for the company as it draws interest from various companies.

According to industry sources on Wednesday, HL Mando conducted a demonstration project with KT to explore commercializing Parkie, which was carried out in the parking lot of KT’s new office building in Pangyo, Gyeonggi Province, for about a month.

A demonstration project refers to a series of processes that evaluate a prototype’s performance and improve it by test driving it in a real environment for a certain period of time before commercialization.

HL Mando reportedly rented some space in KT’s Pangyo office building for a certain period to verify whether Parkie can operate without hiccups. KT, which owns hundreds of buildings nationwide, has reportedly shown interest in the technology that could significantly improve parking efficiency. Increasing parking efficiency can raise the value of buildings and reduce costs such as those of land acquisition, labor, and construction.

HL Mando is also known to be collaborating with a major Korean mobility-related company on autonomous parking robots. Some global automakers are also believed to be interested in using Parkie for new vehicle delivery, transportation, and parking.

Parkie parks a car by sliding underneath the car and lifting it slightly to park it in the designated location. The key is to park the car in the right spot without error by using four levels of autonomous driving technology.

The unmanned parking robot, which can lift vehicles weighing more than 3 tons, is 1,100 millimeters (mm) wide and 1,860 mm long. It is the result of HL Mando‘s autonomous driving technology and advanced component technology and can increase the capacity of existing parking lots by up to 30 percent, which increases the maximum capacity of 1,000 vehicles in a parking lot to 1,300 vehicles, the company said.

The standard parking space in new buildings is currently 2.3 meters wide and 5 meters long, a rather generous size per car to account for human parking errors. Using Parkie is expected to increase parking capacity, increase revenue for parking operators, and reduce labor costs for valet parking.

In recognition of these benefits, Parkie won the Best Innovation Award at CES 2024, the world’s largest electronics exhibition show that took place in Las Vegas, the United States, earlier in 2024.

HL Mando plans to focus on full-fledged product sales and revenue expansion within the year after completing several demonstration projects to commercialize Parkie.