Tesla unveils new car-charging robo-snake
washingtonpost.com
washingtonpost.com
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.
All my instincts are screaming "evil thing!"
It's about just as common as the chromed tentacles, and often co-occurs (2001, Terminator, Matrix, probably more).
Are we really wired for it, though? I've personally never had that fear.
Perhaps it's a little more nurture than nature?
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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- observers did not acquire a fear of either stimulus.
In Experiment 3, monkeys solved complex appetitive discriminative (PAN) problems at comparable rates regardless of whether the discriminative stimuli were the videotaped snake or the flower stimuli used in Experiment 2. Thus, monkeys appear to selectively associate snakes with fear."
Experiment 1 shows that monkeys become afraid of snakes through watching videos of other monkeys being afraid of snakes. Experiment 2 shows that monkeys don't acquire a fear of flowers if shown a video of other monkeys being afraid of flowers. Experiment 3 shows that monkeys can still be conditioned in other tasks using videos of either flowers or snakes.
Further, if there's a learned fear of snakes, that might not be coincidence, even if it's not genetic.
"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."
Humans are wired for noticing snakes. There are neurological mechanisms [1] that have evolved in humans to prioritize visual detection of snakes [2] and other common threat-related stimuli. I don't know what the science says about this perceptual mechanism being inherently linked to a fear response, but it would make sense given the hypothesized selection pressure that gave rise to it (i.e., not only noticing, but avoiding, the snake before it bites me raises the chances my genes will be passed on)
1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feature_detection_(nervous_sys... 2 - http://childstudycenter.rutgers.edu/Publications_files/LoBue...
An analogy might be, many people are afraid of heights, and fewer people are afraid of water. That's despite the fact that water is also dangerous. But none of this proves or disproves the notion that fear of heights may be "hardcoded".
If you had a lifelike stuffed tiger and you posed it in contexts where it wasn't immediately obvious that it wasn't real, I bet you'd get some amazing startle reactions. It sure works with dinosaurs, even though dinosaurs haven't existed for millions of years: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DSup2gj2Gn4
Is it really too much work to plug in a charging lead by hand?
But as someone who can't afford to buy a Tesla, and who wouldn't spend that kind of money on a car even if I had it, I'd rather see the R&D going into more affordable, more practical EVs that I might actually consider purchasing.
I'm tired of seeing this fallacy of "one thing being developed means that another thing is being put on the sideline". It looks to me like Tesla have the best people on the jobs they need to be on, and just adding "more" isn't going to speed things up more than having more mothers will speed up pregnancy.
I was wondering if Tesla would introduce conductive charging at some point; install a base in your garage, park on top of it, car's charged by morning. Perhaps not feasible with the amount of energy they need to transfer?
Build sports car
Use that money to build an affordable car
Use that money to build an even more affordable car
While doing above, also provide zero emission electric power generation options
http://www.teslamotors.com/blog/secret-tesla-motors-master-p... (August 2006)
Oops, I meant "affordable" but "adorable" works too I guess. :-)
There are several much simpler ways a robot car could
connect itself for charging
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.
I'm wishing I still had my gasoline-powered car at that point.
As the cars get more autonomous, being able to initialize charging robotically (either in a supercharger-queue, or when the car parks itself at home) is useful.
Snake version will always be slow due to the number of motors needed, imo.
was considerably more impressive at snake speed!
The mechanism is simple. There are many linear actuators in the base pulling on cables that run through the snake segments and attach to plates at the joints.[4] Cable wear is a common problem, but that can be overcome. Charging robots won't cycle that fast; tens of cycles per hour, not thousands.
[1] http://fuelmatics.com/videos-2/video-demonstration/ [2] http://www.robosoft.com/robotic-solutions/transport--logisit... [3] http://www.ocrobotics.com/ [4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WTkmyDO2ubs
* Attaches to ceiling of structure
* Has some sort of sensor to identify charging port, perhaps on the charger end itself
* Has some limited range of mobility - 2'x2' with X & Y axis movement
* Cord unreels down to the charging port once it is reasonably lined up
* Charging cable has Macbook style electromagnet, reaches "charging zone" and activates, inserting itself
* Safety checks are done, wattage is pumped into the cottage if all is well
I honestly don't know if this is better or worse, it's definitely less cool.
What a lot of people here aren't getting is that snake robots are mechanically simple. They're unusual, but neither complex nor expensive to manufacture.
Alternately, I'm imagining the cute-but-ridiculous solution of making the claw and the car magnetically repel one another, so as it the claw plumb-bobs downward and swings toward the car, it just sort of naturally veers away from the surface, rocking around it in an arc until it stabilizes.
Tesla should consider covering these with living tissue to make them more palatable to humans.
That's where my garage door goes.
As for vandalism or getting driven over, well, that's not really a vulnerability exclusive to this approach.
The tentacle approach is mechanically elegant. The base mechanism is obviously a prototype, but that can be cleaned up for production. Ice, water, and sand in the mechanism will be a problem for outdoor installations, so the base unit has to be protected against those.
"- You definitely do look like a charging socket to me.
- I really do not. Look, I am human...
- No, you really do. You just need a quick charge..."
...probably.
After watching this GIF, I imagined what it would feel like walking past a charging station with this thing on it. How it slowly turns its 10KV-charged head towards me.
"- You definitely do not look like a charging socket to me.
- I really am. Look, I am not human...
- No, you really don't...
- I just need a quick charge!"
In theory, there is minimal height distance from where such a charging station would be in relation to the car and the charging port height, even when accounting for different Tesla models. As such, I'm not clear why they went with something that on the surface appears overly complicated unless it was for the "wow" factor.
The true benefit of a "smart pump-side alignment" system, I think, is that it copes with different models of vehicles (e.g. EV SUVs, EV 18-wheelers, etc.), with their charging ports in different places and orientations.
You can definitely solve the problem using a traditional arm though -- so maybe it's just for the cool factor for now.
He's a pro at coming up with "synergies" between his companies.
While something bound for space needs tons of testing, loads of refinement, and to be the absolute minimum weight possible, the worst that could happen with this in your garage is... what? It can't find the socket so it beeps angrily at you until you move the car closer.
So, it might be partway through it's development cycle for Space X, but good enough right now for use here on earth.
The marketing value of this is enormous. People won't have to get out of their cars and get their hands dirty handling a gas hose. This is going to go over big with women.
And it's Tesla, so they already won't handle a gas hose, just a glorified electric plug.
I think you're underestimating the benefit here. From my talks with Tesla owners, some of the Supercharger stations are pretty far out in the middle of nowhere (for coverage, they have to be).
Late night charging in a rural area without a lot of people around driving an expensive car?
On the plus side, I'm sure the creepy prospect of Terminator-esque robotic snakes dancing idly (maybe Stravinsky's "Infernal Dance" over speakers?) would in and of itself help to deter any would-be muggers from loitering.
It makes a ton of sense that any such vehicle, in addition to going to pick you up, drive you around and drop you off needs to be able to park itself at home base and refuel in an automated fashion.
I wonder if it would be possible for something like this to provide a charge while moving? Like airplanes that can be fueled in the air.
I suspect the energy to keep the charger itself moving would make that a pretty inefficient way of doing things, but it's fun to imagine.
I think this is meant to complement the (as yet unreleased) Tesla can-park-itself-in-your-garage feature.
http://qz.com/473803/tesla-ceo-elon-musk-on-potential-uber-p...
Or in a situation where moving the battery already happens. Maybe where a whole fleet of trucks have purchased into a booster pack scheme. The booster packs fall on and off at various cities along a long route. Kind of like jettisoning a space shuttle's boosters. On either side of the city you have 50 packs charging. Radio that you need more juice and as you hit the city limits a booster latches on, you trail it through the city charging your main pack back up, and drop it off on the other side of the city where it charges and waits for someone going the other way. The truck never stops, it just keeps going and gets 'boosted' by a self-driving battery trailer every time it's within 100 miles of a city.
A battery swap while on the move might be more efficient/faster then a charge on the move. (But it would be nice if the next-gen solar panels installed on a car would be efficient enough to provide enough power for a car drive)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5V0vL3nnHY
And I doubt solar panels would ever be used for charging the whole car in a very significant way, even if they had 80% efficiency.
(But it would be nice if the next-gen solar panels
installed on a car would be efficient enough to provide
enough power for a car drive)
Model S has a 310KW motor. Assume you only run it at 10% of rated power when cruising, and that's 31KW of power draw. More than that, of course, since the motor controller won't be perfectly efficient.
No way you can run a consumer vehicle on solar panels built into the body.
I'd pay extra for such solar panels in the roof.
(and it totally gives me the creeps)
There are days when HN really begs itself to turn into (the worse parts of) Reddit... Seriously though, the gif, video and various comments invoke a mix of various weird feelings in me, most of them not positive.
A real-world use-case involves this in a garage, and you pull into the garage (or tell the car to) and it parks and then this snake starts its dance and finds the chargeport and connects and starts charging... and your dog goes completely ape-shit. And barks and shrieks and jumps and snaps its teeth and gets a nice vise-grip with the snake in its jaws and next thing you know, just like in cartoons, you suddenly see a black silhouette of the dog and inside the silhouette the white skeleton bones of said dog flashing brightly as it electrocutes itself at 80 amps and 240 volts. Tesla 1, Dog 0.
After a little persistence, it usually settles down to an uneasy status quo.
In that book, a character who is an obvious analogue for Elon Musk sponsors the development of a variety of asteroid mining robots, including a type that superficially resembles this thing. 'Siwis' are, unlike this real thing, modular, semi-autonomous, self-propelling, and meant for operating in zero-gravity.
But still... snake robot sponsored by Elon Musk, out of nowhere.
Could they put a charging port on the back of the car that you back onto something? Or something on the floor that you drive over? There has to be a cheaper solution. If a Roomba can do it we must be able to.
I mean, that wouldn't be backwards compatible with existing teslas but I wouldn't think the installed base would be so high that that is a big issue yet.
Elon Musk in general seems to go for "inspire other people to make shit, even if I personally go down in flames in the end". Of course, that doesn't mean he takes unnecessary risks, he just values doing inspiring/world-changing things more than doing profitable things in the long term.
(Also this would probably be great for self-driving electric cars)
Tesla is like if Apple showed all their designs as they are developed (then 95% trashed) instead of waiting 3 years to show only magic finished products.
that wouldn't be backwards compatible
The MO of Tesla so far has been "BACKPORT ALL THE THINGS!" They don't seem to be fans of creating new-model-only features when they can engineer even a complicated solution for all existing models.
Also interesting delivery method for the image in the article... and you can do https://images.washingtonpost.com/?url=https://www.google.co...
Here's the gif for anyone who doesn't want to deal with the (totally useless) article: https://img.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/files/2015/0...
> Btw, we are actually working on a charger that automatically moves out from the wall & connects like a solid metal snake. For realz.
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla-battery...
Maybe there's a reason why cables are part of the appliances instead of the outlets? Also, car owners would certainly prefer a snake that works everywhere and not just at home.
Also, it would be unfortunate if you can't refuel your car because it has no juice left to power this appendage.
http://news.discovery.com/tech/robotics/robotic-arm-inspired...
There is certainly a cool factor with this thing, but think about how it will work at a real fuel/charging station. The driver will only ever see it in a mirror. And it looks like the range of motion is very limited, requiring the plug to be within a 30x30cm box. A later model will probably have a greater range of motion but I cannot see that be any less cumbersome. Give me a wire and a plug.
But maybe Tesla has done some market research. Maybe their target market is old people for whom getting out of the car is a real struggle. Maybe they fear large electrical cables more than rubber ones filled with gasoline. Or maybe they so distrust attendants that they prefer a mechanical octopus fuel their precious car ... until it misses the mark and does some actual damage to the paint.
This will address that concern, as silly as it is.
Given the current limited range of EVs, tech like this will likely encourage behavioral change in EV owners, reducing one of the negatives of EVs (forgetting to charge/not having enough charge to make it to your destination/having to remember to plug in every night), and ultimately spurring wider adoption.
Then again, sometimes you have to say "I wonder if we could..." before you fully understand why in order to advance technology.
Many people have talked over the years about self-driving cars dropping people off and heading home. That sounds great in terms of the number of parking spots, and might make sense in cities where parking costs more than rent, but I cannot see how doubling the number of trips can reduce traffic congestion. The far simpler solution would be to install simple (ie cheap) chargers at each parking spot.
Have they? I've just seen references to cars finding nearby charging stations, not just driving themselves all the way home.
Either way, I think the more likely prospect is that people stop outright owning cars at that point. Why invest in a complete vehicle when you can just pay for a service that has a car pick you up whenever you need a ride?
Some people like to own their own things.
Some people like to do things themselves.
There will always be locations where there is not enough population density to ensure wait times will be <5 minutes for a ride at all times.
There's no reason to expect that self-driving cars will instantly dominate the market once we get to some sort of tipping point. Certainly they will allow for new paradigms in transportation, and they will shift "manual"[0] cars into a less dominant position in the market. Keep in mind that not everyone shares your preferences.
[0] It is interesting that we already have manual and automatic cars. How will we readily distinguish these? Additionally, I'd imagine that there is a large venn diagram overlap between drivers who prefer stick shift and who will prefer to drive their own vehicle.
> the anti-tax attitudes of those people who ironically would prefer to drive their own cars.
I am curious as to why you think that there would be such a large crossover between those who would prefer to have a "manual" car, and those who have anti-tax attitudes?
There will necessarily be a lot of resistance to self driving cars...people like driving! But they are quite inevitable, not necause people will "prefer" them but for totally societal economic reasons. And that is why your argument doesn't make sense to me, it's as if we will have any choice about it, when the current system is so messed up and under funded that it's obvious we won't.
I also see no reason to expect that it is inevitable that self-driving cars become mandatory globally, but that is a different point entirely and not one I'm interested in pursuing right now.
> I also see no reason to expect that it is inevitable that self-driving cars become mandatory globally, but that is a different point entirely and not one I'm interested in pursuing right now.
Your premise is just completely flawed: you see self-driving cars as providing the benefit of freeing humans from the tedium of driving themselves, when in reality they are more about optimizing limited infrastructure. The former is a "nice to have but not necessary" benefit, the latter basically drastically reduces the amount of resources needed to maintain a city, it is a serious economic benefit that will be very hard to ignore. Of course, your city could allow for manual driving, but at great cost in needing more roads and such, it would be a serious tax burden on your residents (and rich countries can afford it now, but will they be able to afford it as populations double, triple, and space becomes much more limited?).
So your premise is flawed, you are attacking the wrong thing.
Interviewer: So what's next for you?
Musk: Well, I've been reading a lot about the teledildonics industry, and I think there's some real opportunities for synergy with some of the technologies we've been developing for Tesla. Especially in the Japanese hentai markets...
http://backtothefuture.wikia.com/wiki/Texaco_service_station...
[0] http://archive.wired.com/cars/futuretransport/magazine/16-09...
Oct 10, 2014 - https://youtu.be/FZ6lZJWL_Xk?t=9m23s
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- -It makes the "small parking space enter-exit point moot", I don't get it.
If it does, I wonder what this innovation might mean to that law.
Some may think this is cool, but to me this isn't very user friendly.
I hope this is just a concept. Because I hate to see it in real world.
This is bullshit right? They were able to disable the engine, but the onboard logic makes sure that the car comes to a gradual stop.
Also, the flexibility of the thing hints to me that it will be used for charging more than just cars in the future.
Edit: regarding the Shell attempt, one great thing about EVs is how safe they are to "refuel." You can literally have a four year old do it. I have.
Isn't there some convention against allowing robots to re-fuel without human intervention?
Isn't such a rule in the same class as the rule against giving them the keys to the armory?
New prototype robotic charging arm? stock down ~8%
http://purpledelivery.com (LA only)