Volkswagen has just announced that they’ve developed a robot that can charge up your EV - autonomously. Activated via an app, the mobile robot will drive itself to the vehicle that needs charging, communicate with it and couple (and decouple) the plug – all without human interaction.
“The mobile charging robot will spark a revolution when it comes to charging in different parking facilities, such as multistorey car parks, parking spaces and underground car parks because we bring the charging infrastructure to the car and not the other way around. With this, we are making almost every car park electric, without any complex individual infrastructural measures”, summarises Mark Möller, Head of Development at Volkswagen Group Components.
The prototype consists of two parts. The first is the mobile robot and the second is the energy storage device. Fully charged, the latter will be equipped to dispense 25kWh of power each. A mobile robot can have several battery wagons at the same time and deliver DC quick charging of up to 50kW.
Volkswagen says that the mobile robot - which is fitted with an array of cameras, lasers and ultrasonic sensors – can drive autonomously. The combination of these systems allows the mobile robot to move around freely in the parking garage. The idea of the concept is you park in spaces that are available and the mobile robot comes along with the battery wagon directly to your parked vehicle, hooks up the battery pack to the vehicle using its robotic arm and voila your EV is charging.
For operators of different parking facilities this is a quick and easy solution to electrify every parking space. “This approach has an enormous economic potential”, says Möller. “The constructional work as well as the costs for the assembly of the charging infrastructure can be reduced considerably through the use of the robots. Even the well-known problem of a charging station being blocked by another vehicle will no longer exist with our concept. You simply choose any parking space as usual. You can leave the rest to our electronic helper.”
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