

Dutch robot fills car gas tank – human not required

Posted in Tech/Sci News by Joel Levin on February 4th, 2008

gasrobot.jpegDutch inventors have unveiled a 75,000 Euro (about $111,100) robot able to fill up your gas tank without you needing to get out the car. The robot works by looking up your car model in a database and finding what fuel type (in addition to your fuel cap design) to use. It then extends its robotic arm, unscrews your gas cap, and puts the gas nozzle in as any human would.

The inventor hopes to have it in a handful of Dutch gas stations by the end of the year.

We hope he starts trying to sell these robots to US stations, as it would be good for people to not have to deal so closely with gasoline ever again. However, we are wondering about how much longer this device will be useful with all the alternative fuel source discussion and research taking place. Very cool, nonetheless.

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12 Responses to “Dutch robot fills car gas tank – human not required”

  1. Matt says:

    Shell tried this in the US a few years ago… It failed horribly.

  2. Marc says:

    Eh, this might be better than the shell one, we have the tech to do it properly this time around. As for alternative fuel, anything in the feasible life time of this is going to be hybrid and bio-fuel for the majority of the US.

  3. Taylor says:

    We’ll still need to put SOMETHING in our cars though. This would be cool, and probably not as short-lived as you would think.

  4. Jesse says:

    Lol, actually It looks like it “fills gasoline SUV with diesel fuel on mistake.”

  5. dave says:

    This robot isn’t limited to gasoline/diesel fuel. It could be used for any fuel-based system.

    Hydrogen is a much more likely candidate as an alternative fuel source than heavy, expensive batteries.

    Hydrogen can power internal combustion vehicles or fuel-cell vehicles. Instead of “hybrid vehicles”, we could be using a hybrid fuel.

  6. Ghulam Abbas Khatri says:

    great idea! its save lots of time..

  7. Rakel says:

    Mine has to be opened with the key, will the robot lockpick it for me?

  8. James says:

    Ok you might be able to save time ,but how much time? A minute or two ? You have spent some time and money on building a device like this just to save a few minutes? Why not focus on clean energy solutions, rather than a robot which might not turn out to be so reliable.

  9. sam says:

    what if you modded your car to take biofuel, then it be annoying!

  10. Giorgis says:

    Guys move your butt … do you want to revise the width of the seating in movie theaters ?

  11. beelzebub says:

    yeah..because obviously within a generation every petrol station in the world will be replaced by alternatice fuels….

    wake up idiot.

  12. Lin Floyd says:

    Maybe I am just a cranky curmudgeon, but exactly how much petroleum and petroleum byproducts are used to manufacture this and how much energy is required to operate it? What a monumentally stupid product! Lets just set the earth on fire and be done with it…..

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