BYD Shows a Robotic Arm That Plugs In Cars in the UAE
BYD has demonstrated a robotic charging arm in the United Arab Emirates that opens the charging port, inserts the connector and unplugs the car again without the driver leaving the seat, part of the company's pitch for an automated flash charging network abroad.
Chinese reports published on the day described a complete sequence rather than a concept clip. Once the car is parked in the bay, the arm opens the port cover, picks up and inserts the connector, charges the vehicle, removes the connector and closes the cover, which is the full sequence a driver would otherwise perform by hand.
And the station behind it is a system rather than a plug. The demonstration site combines solar generation with energy storage cabinets and charging equipment, so it does not have to pull its full load from the grid at peak, and the charging power shown on site reached 1,000 kilowatts.
BYD's numbers for the car are the ones worth quoting carefully. The reports say that with the second generation Blade Battery the setup delivers a rapid top up in five minutes and a full charge in nine minutes, but they did not state the starting and ending charge levels, the vehicle used or the ambient temperature during the demonstration, which in a desert summer are the conditions that decide whether a charging claim holds.
The hardware also has to cope with a messier problem than speed. The arm uses visual recognition combined with force feedback control to find the port, which is how it manages the small misalignment between where a car parks and where the socket actually sits, and it is compatible with several local connector specifications, a requirement for any overseas deployment because charging standards differ from those in China, and a detail local reports treated as the practical difference between a demo and a product.
But the feature that makes the arm more than a gadget is the handoff. BYD also showed a one tap park and charge function where the car drives itself into the bay and then passes control to the arm, joining automated parking and automated charging into one process, which is the point at which a charging stop stops needing a person at all.
The commercial case is about attendance rather than cables. A bay that plugs itself in needs no one on site to help a driver, which matters for a network that wants to sit beside a solar farm in the desert and run without staff.
The company has been working on this for years. Earlier versions recharged automated guided vehicles inside factories before the work moved to passenger car parks, and patents BYD has published describe further functions such as reading a car's battery level and tyre pressure, locating tyre valves to inflate tyres, and operating without any modification to the vehicle, though those descriptions are not features announced for the UAE system.
So the gap between the demonstration and a service is the commercial detail. BYD has not said how many sites will receive the arm, when it will be available to customers, or whether it will be offered outside the UAE, which leaves the 1,000 kilowatt figure and the five minute top up as claims about a site rather than about a network anyone can use.
BYD showed a robotic arm that plugs in and unplugs a car without the driver leaving it
The arm uses visual recognition and force feedback to locate the charging port
The demonstration site combines solar, storage and charging at 1,000 kilowatts
BYD says the second generation Blade Battery gives a five minute top up and nine minute full charge
BYD has not said how many sites will get the arm or when customers can use it
Source: Pandaily
