Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Tesla unveils new car-charging robo-snake

washingtonpost.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 209 posts

Re: Tesla unveils new car-charging robo-snake

#121

Post by mikeash »

cmiller1 wrote: post #105

I think Infiniti's induction charging concept seems much cooler: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vlYADNqxrPw

That's OK for overnight charging, if you don't mind paying a little extra for the electricity due to losses. But for fast charging, those losses translate into massive waste heat. A Tesla supercharger, for example, tops out at 120kW of power. If the inductive charger is 90% efficient (which I think is a realistic number) then that's 12kW of heat to dissipate. That's a lot. The car itself has similar losses when charging, and has a hefty cooling system to keep up with it, and it's going into a massive battery. Cooling a small inductive charging pad could get interesting.

Re: Tesla unveils new car-charging robo-snake

#123

Post by keerthiko »

nothis wrote: post #119
Animats wrote: post #15

Nice. Robotic fueling has been done before [1][2], but this is much less clunky. This looks like the OC Robotics snake robot.[3] Finally, a use for snake robots, which have been around for 25 years but are not used much. Tesla has a good application for this - the car end is cooperative and standard. The car's parking guidance system can be programmed to recognize visual targets and get itself into the proper positio…

Call me a pessimist but I look at that thing and I see it breaking. Drive over it, vandalism, one of the hundred little motors having a defect... Why not just have two or three axis of movement in a more static, 90° construction??

The whole point of snake robotics is that one motor being a defect shouldn't render the entire robot useless. Of course that depends on intelligent control systems (algorithmic or mechanical) that can deal with limitations on any of the joints, without explicit damage sensors.

As for vandalism or getting driven over, well, that's not really a vulnerability exclusive to this approach.

Re: Tesla unveils new car-charging robo-snake

#124

Post by stickydink »

I think a lot of people were waiting for it, Elon basically described this last December!

> Btw, we are actually working on a charger that automatically moves out from the wall & connects like a solid metal snake. For realz.

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/550297212769402881

Re: Tesla unveils new car-charging robo-snake

#125

Post by trevyn »

nothis wrote: post #114
jonchang wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Experiment 1 results indicated that observer rhesus monkeys acquired a fear of snakes through watching videotapes of model monkeys behaving fearfully with snakes. In Experiment 2, observers watched edited videotapes that showed models reacting either fearfully to toy snakes and nonfearfully to artificial flowers (SN+/FL-) or vice versa (FL+/SN-). SN+/FL- observers acquired a fear of snakes but not of flowers; FL+/SN…

So, is it obvious that monkeys aren't afraid of snakes if they never see other monkeys act afraid before? Because that's what I'd test first. Further, if there's a learned fear of snakes, that might not be coincidence, even if it's not genetic.

Yep. From the actual paper referenced above:

"Although considerable controversy has existed over the extent to which this fear of snakes is “innate” as opposed to based on learning, current evidence suggests that learning is necessary for the fear to manifest itself, at least for some primate species in which wild-reared but not laboratory-reared monkeys show a fear of snakes (see Mineka & Cook, 1988, for a review). For example, Mineka and Cook demonstrated that laboratory-reared rhesus monkeys who were initially unafraid of snakes rapidly acquired a fear of snakes after watching wild-reared model monkeys exhibit a strong fear of snakes (Cook, Mineka, Wolkenstein, & Laitsch, 1985; Mineka, Davidson, Cook, & Keir, 1984). The naive laboratory reared observers initially reached rapidly for food placed adjacent to a series of stimuli, including a real snake, toy snakes, and neutral objects."

Re: Tesla unveils new car-charging robo-snake

#126

Post by ams6110 »

corysama wrote: post #12

The gif is sped up. This vid is actual speed https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uMM0lRfX6YI I think it's awesome. But, it obvious that the current implementation will inspire the creeps in lots of people. Sci-fi horror has put an unfortunate bad rap on robotic tentacles and chromed vertebrae.

It seems completely, extravagantly unnecessary, but that's much like many other qualities of Tesla cars I guess.

Is it really too much work to plug in a charging lead by hand?

Re: Tesla unveils new car-charging robo-snake

#127

Post by Already__Taken »

ams6110 wrote: post #126
corysama wrote: post #12

The gif is sped up. This vid is actual speed https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uMM0lRfX6YI I think it's awesome. But, it obvious that the current implementation will inspire the creeps in lots of people. Sci-fi horror has put an unfortunate bad rap on robotic tentacles and chromed vertebrae.

It seems completely, extravagantly unnecessary, but that's much like many other qualities of Tesla cars I guess. Is it really too much work to plug in a charging lead by hand?

Same reason keyless entry exists.

Re: Tesla unveils new car-charging robo-snake

#128

Post by ceequof »

ams6110 wrote: post #126
corysama wrote: post #12

The gif is sped up. This vid is actual speed https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uMM0lRfX6YI I think it's awesome. But, it obvious that the current implementation will inspire the creeps in lots of people. Sci-fi horror has put an unfortunate bad rap on robotic tentacles and chromed vertebrae.

It seems completely, extravagantly unnecessary, but that's much like many other qualities of Tesla cars I guess. Is it really too much work to plug in a charging lead by hand?

Robot cars don't have hands.

Re: Tesla unveils new car-charging robo-snake

#129

Post by lucio »

jedberg wrote: post #60
blackbeard wrote: post #57

My wife has a phobia of snakes and worms. This isn't going well for my Model X sales pitch to her...

I'm pretty sure your entire pitch is the doors go like this: | | instead of this: - -

Half the doors go | |, the other half - -

It makes the "small parking space enter-exit point moot", I don't get it.

Re: Tesla unveils new car-charging robo-snake

#130

Post by freerobby »

ams6110 wrote: post #126
corysama wrote: post #12

The gif is sped up. This vid is actual speed https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uMM0lRfX6YI I think it's awesome. But, it obvious that the current implementation will inspire the creeps in lots of people. Sci-fi horror has put an unfortunate bad rap on robotic tentacles and chromed vertebrae.

It seems completely, extravagantly unnecessary, but that's much like many other qualities of Tesla cars I guess. Is it really too much work to plug in a charging lead by hand?

Imagine you pull up to a Supercharger on Friday night of a holiday weekend. All the stalls are taken and there is a line of a handful of cars in front of you.

Today, you wait in your car until the people in front of you finish charging.

Tomorrow, you leave your car in line and go get dinner.

Post reply on HN