Bicycles instead of cars: for the mobility transition to work, cities want to create more parking facilities without interfering too much with the cityscape. The Japanese manufacturer Giken has developed a garage called Eco Cycle for this purpose, which parks bicycles underground - fully automatically. To ensure the reliability of the robot garage, the engineers rely on robust and maintenance-free energy chains from Cologne-based plastics specialist igus for the elevator's cable routing.

Robot parks bicycles fully automatically in an underground space

And this is how the futuristic garage works, which has now been installed more than sixty times in 26 cities in Japan and may also be seen in Germany at some point: The cyclist places their bike on a rail in the ground at the station and registers contactlessly using a card scanner. Then the show begins. A door opens and a gripper at floor level pulls the bike over the rail into the car-sized station. The bike now stands on top of a mobile platform that travels up to 16 meters in depth and can rotate 360 degrees. This lift is surrounded by round walls to which 200 rail-mounted bicycle racks are attached at regular intervals. The diameter of this space is 8.5 meters. What happens next looks like something out of a science fiction movie. The elevator descends, stops at a level with a free parking space and turns in the right direction. A telescopic mechanism then pushes the bike onto the bike rack. The entire parking process takes an average of thirteen seconds.

Reliability in automation thanks to energy chains from igus

Sufficient parking space, virtually no change to the cityscape and a robot that takes care of parking - this level of automation brings many advantages, but also has a potential weak point: people are dependent on the reliability of the machine. If a lift malfunctions, for example due to a faulty control cable, up to 200 cyclists would have to walk home in annoyance. To avoid this, Giken relies on energy chains made of high-performance plastic from the E4.42 and 1400 series from igus. They ensure that the energy and data cables of the parking system follow the horizontal and vertical movements in the lifting and telescopic shafts in a controlled manner.

Service life of up to 4.5 million operating cycles

"The energy chains protect the elevator's electrical cables from mechanical damage and external influences, which is essential for the reliable operation of the entire system," says Jörg Ottersbach, head of the e-chains business unit at igus. The e-chains are easy to install and maintain, which increases the cost-effectiveness of the system. According to igus, they are also extremely robust and durable. "Our energy chains are designed to achieve the long service life required by Giken of up to 4.5 million operating cycles at high speeds and accelerations without any problems." The lift's lifting axis operates at a speed of three meters per second and an acceleration of three meters per second squared, while the telescopic axis even operates at four meters per second squared with a stroke of 2.6 meters. "The use of our energy chains made of high-performance plastic helps to increase the operational safety and efficiency of the Eco Cycle bicycle parking garages," says Ottersbach.

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