Meet the parking garage perfectly suited for an episode of The Jetsons.

Below the UCLA Santa Monica Outpatient Surgery Center, the machines in a new automated garage do all of the work for you, but watch out: software glitches could hold your car hostage. After opening the $8-million garage to the surgery center's employees and to the public in the spring of last year, developers say they are still debugging new control software for two robotic arms that grab, store and return vehicles to docking bays without human assistance.

The two 8,000-pound cranes, which share a fairly tight aisle, do not always communicate properly when there are as many as six cars that need to be parked simultaneously, and that's causing delays. "That's complicated... to not crash into each other. One crane should move out of the way," said Randy Miller, president of Nautilus Group, which built the garage. "We're refining the logic."

Miller said his is the first robotic garage operating the West Coast. "There's a price to pay for being the first," he said.

In Los Angeles, others are planned at West Hollywood City Hall and at an affordable housing project in Chinatown. Miller said he intends to build more in Santa Monica, including at a proposed mixed-use housing and commercial project at Sixth Street and Colorado Avenue.

The Santa Monica garage located directly across from the UCLA hospital on 16th Street might not be operating to its full potential yet—but there are still benefits.

When the equipment is working properly, a car can be retrieved in less than two minutes. Plus, there is virtually no threat of thefts, and you will never roam the garage in a panic, frantically clicking your key-less entry remote when you've forgotten where exactly you parked. "It breaks down sometimes, but when it's working it's really great," said Laurin Eimers, a registered nurse who works at the outpatient center. She said her car has been held up a few times by the technical malfunctions.