Would you trust your car to a robot? This a question many New Yorkers will be asking this month, when the city gets its first automated robot garage, in Chinatown. You'lll simply drive your car onto a robotic pallet, and the garage will handle things from there, lowering your car into the garage and shifting the vehicle to an open space with a vertical- and lateral-moving computer-operated lift.

Other than the attendant collecting money and explaining the system to confused car owners, the garage requires no human supervision. The two loading bays of the Chinatown garage are equipped with laser and radar sensors that detect whether occupants have left the car and determines if the car fits on the pallet.

The system isn't glitch free, though. A similar garage in Hoboken, New Jersey dropped a Cadillac Deville six floors in 2004 and dropped a Jeep four floors a year later. Last year a bug in the system trapped cars inside for 26 hours. According to the manufacturer, Robotic Parking Systems, those bugs have been fixed. The company plans to expand its business with a 900-car garage in Dubai and a 1,200-car garage for the United Arab Emirates; several new U.S. projects are also in the works.