Good news for lazy people: after charging by induction, here is a robot developed by Hyundai that will automatically plug in your electric car.
Hyundai will not only have the Kona or the Ioniq 6 to present as novelties on its stand at the Mobility Show to be held in Seoul, Korea, from March 31 to April 9. There will indeed also be the ACR, a single-armed robot whose function is quite simply to connect a cable to the charging port of an electric vehicle and to disconnect it once it is full of electrons.
If its presentation seems imminent, the video below, dating from last summer, is however made by computer, as you have surely noticed. We see a Hyundai Ioniq 5 parked in a space dedicated to electric vehicle charging where, rest assured, it is clearly specified for those allergic to the niche that it is not necessary to park absolutely parallel between the lines. Once the car is parked, even at a slight diagonal, the arm communicates with it so that it opens the cover of its charging port and precisely determines, via an integrated 3D camera and intelligence-based control technology artificial, the position and inclination of the hold.
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The robot then inserts the charger to the port and the charging session can begin. Once the latter is finished, he performs the reverse operation and closes the cover of the vehicle’s charging port. Hyundai specifies that it works both at night or in the rain, that a laser detector is responsible for monitoring the perimeter to monitor the slightest anomaly or a possible obstacle in order to suspend the load if necessary and that the robot can operate with any type of charger.
Beyond saving time for the driver, it is also more comfortable outdoors in the event of bad weather, not to mention the fact that handling a charger with a thick cable such as on fast terminals is sometimes physically difficult.
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At AP, we see just a small grain of sand in this well-oiled mechanism, even if Hyundai has probably thought about it: on the Ioniq 5, like on many other electric cars, there is on the charging port a lower flap or a cover “transforming” the Type 2 socket into a Combo CCS and whose operation is not motorized, which, without its removal as in the video (or the addition of a finger to the arm ?), would make the task of the ACR very difficult.
