Tesla Is Working on Robotic Snakes That Emerge from the Wall to Charge Your Car • Hacker News Board

Re: Tesla Is Working on Robotic Snakes That Emerge from the Wall to Charge Your Car

#21

Post by gfodor » Wed, Dec 31, 2014, 4:04 PM UTC

Retric wrote: post #8

prawn wrote: post #2

Someone could do this for regular laptop hookups eventually . e.g. Every morning at the office, I connect a power cable, monitor cables and a mouse.

They have been around for 20+ years. It's called a laptop Base station / Docking station. There on a fairly wide range of buissness laptops sadly that's one of the ports that Apple does not seem to support. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Docking_station

The advantage of a solution like this is that you don't have to find the cable (or in the case of a docking station, the place to put the laptop), the cable finds you. So you could put your laptop down anywhere in the office, and in theory, a cord would eventually wind its way over to you to plug itself in.

Re: Tesla Is Working on Robotic Snakes That Emerge from the Wall to Charge Your Car

#22

Post by josephwegner » Wed, Dec 31, 2014, 4:07 PM UTC

gfodor wrote: post #20

acd wrote: post #17

This seems way to complicated why not just have a device under your car that injects the power socket. Like for example park the front wheels on a platter that by the weight of the car injects the socket.

How is this less complicated? In your case you'd need to install something non-standard connected to high voltage power in the floor of your garage and then have to carefully park your car every time. It'd be expensive and tricky to install, and impose a mental burden every single time you park your car. Not to mention that it would have moving parts that are often put under strain (particularly in those instances wh…

I believe you're over-thinking it. You don't need to install it in your floor, you could simply place it on top of your floor.

And it's not that hard to make it easy for people to line up - modern docks use a sort of fuzzy connector that doesn't need to lock in perfectly, just as long as you are within a certain range.

The roomba is the best example that I can think of for this - I can pretty much set my roomba down anywhere roughly on the dock, and it will start charging. I could definitely park my car with the same accuracy.

Re: Tesla Is Working on Robotic Snakes That Emerge from the Wall to Charge Your Car

#23

Post by sp332 » Wed, Dec 31, 2014, 4:07 PM UTC

revscat wrote: post #9

Is there any existing tech that even approaches this? Tesla cars are an evolution and improvement upon tech that previously existed. Ditto Space X. But I'm not aware of anything that even approaches Doc Ock-like articulating cables/hoses that are able to overcome the force of gravity.

Overcoming gravity isn't a problem if you don't have to worry about battery life. Why would it be any different from arm-type robots now?

Re: Tesla Is Working on Robotic Snakes That Emerge from the Wall to Charge Your Car

#24

Post by pearjuice » Wed, Dec 31, 2014, 4:14 PM UTC

Cannot wait for Rule 34 to come into effect.

edit: I mean that it would be interesting to see this technology getting used for creative purposes. I hope Tesla will be permissive in people adapting their technology and not - if it is real - put it behind a massive patent and licensing wall before anyone can put their hands on it.

Re: Tesla Is Working on Robotic Snakes That Emerge from the Wall to Charge Your Car

#25

Post by genericresponse » Wed, Dec 31, 2014, 4:18 PM UTC

ape4 wrote: post #15

Cool, but its not exactly taxing to get out of the car to plug it in.

Yes, but unlike a gasoline powered car the typical "penalty" for forgetting to "refill" it is higher. If you forget to plug the car in on the wrong day, you might be stuck for upwards of 30 min waiting for it to charge. That's compounded with the fact that there are comparatively few charging stations available outside of home. Contrast this with a car where if I forget to fill it up the night before I lose 5-10 min and can find a gas station at least every few miles.

Re: Tesla Is Working on Robotic Snakes That Emerge from the Wall to Charge Your Car

#26

Post by hardwaresofton » Wed, Dec 31, 2014, 4:20 PM UTC

beltex wrote: post #4

This was originally mentioned by Elon back in October at the launch of the Dual Motor Model S and Autopilot event. It was in reference to the cars new ability to park itself. “Something I’d like to do, which I think many of our engineers will be hearing this in real-time, is have the charge connector plug itself in. Like an articulating, like sort of a snake, like Metal Gear Solid or something.” http://youtu.be/FZ6lZ…

"like Metal Gear Solid or something". My man-crush on this guy is only getting worse (better?).

Realistically though, why not just have some sort of hard-arm extend? why the flexibility of a snake? with a little bit of OCR and an arm that can extend in length and rotate on an axis, it seems like you could get pretty close

Re: Tesla Is Working on Robotic Snakes That Emerge from the Wall to Charge Your Car

#27

Post by steve_taylor » Wed, Dec 31, 2014, 4:20 PM UTC

Says robots will kill us all, builds robot tentacles.

Re: Tesla Is Working on Robotic Snakes That Emerge from the Wall to Charge Your Car

#28

Post by higherpurpose » Wed, Dec 31, 2014, 4:21 PM UTC

gfodor wrote: post #20

acd wrote: post #17

This seems way to complicated why not just have a device under your car that injects the power socket. Like for example park the front wheels on a platter that by the weight of the car injects the socket.

How is this less complicated? In your case you'd need to install something non-standard connected to high voltage power in the floor of your garage and then have to carefully park your car every time. It'd be expensive and tricky to install, and impose a mental burden every single time you park your car. Not to mention that it would have moving parts that are often put under strain (particularly in those instances wh…

"Non-standard"? As opposed to the highly standardized EV chargers and their ports?

The EV industry is just emerging and in huge flux. Charging the cars from the floor would make much more sense, especially if we're going to charge them even without cables, wirelessly, in the future (and yes, once again breaking the several year old "standard" in the name of progress).

Re: Tesla Is Working on Robotic Snakes That Emerge from the Wall to Charge Your Car

#29

Post by logfromblammo » Wed, Dec 31, 2014, 4:24 PM UTC

It's nice to have goals, but I can't help thinking that the incremental improvement of this over just plugging in a dumb cable by hand is not going to be as large as some of the other things Tesla could be working on.

It also seems like this sort of thing would be making the business less focused as an electric car company.

So if anything, it should be a cable that emerges from the car to plug into an appropriate power socket, not the other way around.

Re: Tesla Is Working on Robotic Snakes That Emerge from the Wall to Charge Your Car

#30

Post by wehadfun » Wed, Dec 31, 2014, 4:28 PM UTC

pearjuice wrote: post #24

Cannot wait for Rule 34 to come into effect. edit: I mean that it would be interesting to see this technology getting used for creative purposes. I hope Tesla will be permissive in people adapting their technology and not - if it is real - put it behind a massive patent and licensing wall before anyone can put their hands on it.

that was funny.