Watch: Hyundai disclosed a a person-armed robotic that costs your electric auto for you

• Hyundai formulated an automatic charging robotic that plugs in your electrical motor vehicle for you. 
• The robot makes use of a digital camera and AI to find a car’s charging port and plug it in. 
• Tesla uncovered a identical prototype many years ago for a metallic charging “snake.”

Charging an electric powered auto can be a problem. But Hyundai envisions a foreseeable future the place motorists won’t require to get out of their automobiles to refuel. 

To make that vision a reality, the Korean automaker designed an “automatic charging robot” (ACR) that will take treatment of the nitty gritty pieces of charging for you. It posted a movie this week demonstrating the new tech, which appears to be like like a less terrifying version of a very similar prototype that Tesla confirmed off way again in 2015.

This is how it operates: After a driver backs up upcoming to a charging stall, the ACR communicates with the auto to pop the flap masking its charge port. Then, using a camera and artificial intelligence, the ACR guides the charging plug into the correct place and charging begins. All the although, the car’s driver can possibly kick back inside of or merely wander absent. 

The robot’s screen shows charging development, even though its speakers bark terms of warning at any passersby who arrive too close. Right after the charging session, the ACR returns the charger to its place, shuts the car’s charging port, and flashes a welcoming “BYE” message on its monitor.

It is similar in concept — but a lot less nightmarish in execution — to a prototype that Tesla unveiled quite a few years in the past. In 2014, Tesla CEO Elon Musk tweeted that the enterprise was doing the job on a charger that “automatically moves out from the wall & connects like a good metal snake.” The subsequent year, Tesla posted a video of an early-phase charging robot that resembled Health practitioner Octopus’s sentient bionic arms from “Spider-Guy 2.”

Like some of its other stalled or scrapped tasks — the rocket-run Roadster supercar and battery-swapping tech, for instance — Tesla’s snake charger has not materialized. But in 2020, Musk verified it’s still in the is effective. 

Hyundai will keep establishing the ACR, with the hope that it will sometime make charging far more obtainable for people today with mobility troubles and more convenient for all. Considering that most charging stations are open up to the elements (compared with fuel stations), at the really minimum a helpful robot assistant could maintain you dry when the temperature receives rough.

See Hyundai’s ACR in action here: