IT·Science News

Hyundai’s parking robots move real cars in a Korean apartment garage

Hyundai Motor Group’s car-parking robots showed on Thursday how vehicles can be moved and rearranged in parking spaces without human intervention, The Korea Herald reports. The demonstration was part of a pilot project run by a consortium of Hyundai Motor, Hyundai WIA and Hyundai Engineering & Construction, and is the first project in Korea to deploy parking robots across more than 50 parking spaces at an actual residential complex. Residents can request vehicle transfers through wall-mounted terminals.

Korea JoongAng Daily, reporting when the pilot was announced in August, named the site as Hillstate The Wave City, an apartment complex in Siheung, Gyeonggi Province. Two sets of robots work in a 53-space basement car park. They operate in pairs, use lidar sensors to slide under a car and lift its wheels, and can carry SUVs of up to 3.4 tons. The robots were first shown at CES 2026, and the project runs under a smart city regulatory sandbox with funding approval from the transport ministry.

How each outlet framed it

• The Korea Herald — the milestone: robots moving residents’ cars in a real apartment garage, a first for Korea.
• Korea JoongAng Daily — the promise and the test: Hyundai WIA says the system could fit 20 to 50 percent more cars than conventional parking, and the pilot will measure parking and retrieval times, waiting times and success rates.

What we don't know yet: how the robots perform with residents day to day, and when, or whether, the system will be offered more widely. A control system for 100 robots is still in development.