Travel time model for a tower-based automated parking system

This paper aims to investigate a tower-based automated parking system, with the appearance of a cylinder. The tower crane can simultaneously implement two types of movement: (1) ascending/descending in the vertical direction and (2) rotating counter clockwise/clockwise. The shuttle can move along the diameter to the opposite parking slot. Using the characteristics of the device, we first deduce a travel time model of the system. Then, we obtain the optimal system sizes by solving the model. We further discuss minimising the maximum travel time and the dwelling point of the crane. Finally, sensitivity analyses are also conducted, in order to demonstrate the optimal value of the proposed system. We have varied the height (in time unit) for a fixed area of the system and found that, when the system configuration deviates from the optimal value, the travel time of the parking system increases greatly. We also investigate how and to what degree the different ratio of the parameters affects the expected travel time of a tower-based system. In addition, we investigate the influence of different system configurations (in the light of travel time and footprint) on system performance. The corresponding analysis results can provide the designer the required system size.