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If every car had NASCAR style fill holes all in the same place, a robot could probably insert a hose and fill you up. As it is now, I would not trust an automat
by jack-r-abbit 13y ago
If every car had NASCAR style fill holes all in the same place, a robot could probably insert a hose and fill you up. As it is now, I would not trust an automatic robot arm to locate my fuel door, open my fuel door, twist off my cap, place cap in out of way spot, insert hose to fill, replace cap and close fuel door without ever scratching my car. Who is responsible when it malfunctions and scratches the shit out of it? Or misses and pumps gass all over the ground? Right now if that happens, it is my fault and I'll deal with the fix later. I'd rather not have to deal with some service station who is just going to claim the fault is with the robot manufacturer who is probably going to blame the car manufacturer. I can pump my own gas, thanks. (I'm looking at you too Oregon!)
- learc83 13y ago>I would not trust an automatic robot arm For 95% of newish cars this problem is fairly trivial because the gas cap/fuel doors are so similar (there are exceptions, I'm specifically thinking of cars that require you to press a button inside the car to open the refueling port), and any college robotics lab could design a system to handle it that was much less likely to scratch your car/spill gas than a human operator. The problem is that in Oregon/New Jersey it's a jobs program, so regulators are unlikely to allow something like that. In every other state, gas stations have no incentive to pay for such a system because they have no labor costs to save.