Autonomous Charging Robots For Electric Cars: The Search For Charging Stations Should Come To An End

While the owners of plug-in electric cars often save charging and mostly use the combustion engine, the owners of pure electric vehicles are dependent on public charging stations, unless it works in the garage at home. But there is almost never a power connection on the often fully parked streets in the cities. That can be changed, thought researchers at the Graz University of Technology in Austria and developed a mobile robot. It recognizes vehicles that have a charge subscription and automatically rolls to the power-hungry vehicle. Once there, the robot arm connects the charging cable to the socket. It tracks the charging process and stops it when the vehicle's battery is full. Then he operates the next car. It is connected to the network by cable. It is also conceivable to supply the robot with energy without contact with current-carrying coils in the floor.

So Far The Robot Has Only Had Basic Equipment

The one developed by the Graz researchers and Alveri in Ried im Innkreis, a company that builds charging stations, among other things, and Arti Robots in Graz, cannot yet do everything that should be possible. At the moment, an open “tank” lid must indicate to him where to intervene. Then it rolls to its "customers" at a speed of up to 20 kilometers per hour. "Several safety mechanisms are implemented throughout the charging robot," says Konstantin Mautner-Lassnig from ARTI Robots. “The mobile platform uses laser scanners to permanently scan the area for possible obstacles and detects when an object comes too close. Then the platform stops immediately. "

Matter Accurate To The Millimeter

The charging process is not a major challenge for humans. For an automated system, on the other hand, this is a very complex matter, because it is accurate to the millimeter, says Bernhard Walzel from the Institute for Vehicle Technology at Graz University of Technology. In multi-storey car parks, semi-public parking areas at universities, for example, or in customer parking lots, there could be designated parking areas for e-vehicles in which charging robots can maneuver and supply the vehicles parked there.

Vehicles Should Call The Robot Themselves

In the past few years, there has been an incredible amount of movement in the development of e-vehicles, the necessary infrastructure, charging options and automated systems,” says Walzel. “It would now be important that the individual systems also communicate with one another. In the future, vehicles should report their charging requirements to the robot independently. Or it can be heard via the app.