Hyundai created a robot that helps electric car owners charge their cars without having to touch any cables or plugs.
They first announced their invention last year and recently released a video of it charging an Ioniq 6 sedan at their major research center in South Korea.
This video shows a car called the Ioniq 6 automatically parking itself and even opening its charge port door using a feature called Remote Smart Parking Assist. With some help from a 3D camera, it then plugs in a cable to charge up the battery, which sends you a notification when done. When it’s all charged up, it will unplug the car again.
To make sure the robot works in any weather and location, Hyundai specially built a charging station at their R&D center for testing. The robot was designed to keep working even when there might be obstacles or bad weather outside.
Robotic charging is important for cars that drive by themselves as no one will be in the car to plug them in. This can help people who may not have the physical ability to plug and unplug a charger. In America, there are electric car charging stations but no one to help you do this.
Hyundai has not said if they will make a charging robot yet. Before them, Tesla and Stellantis showed similar robots that look like snakes. Recently, Ram introduced their electric truck the 1500 REV that could come with inductive charging by 2024 but it is uncertain yet.