Anicet Mbida 06:51, March 27, 2023

Anicet Mbida gives us every morning what is best in innovation. This Monday, he is interested in the return of pump attendants in gas stations, in the form of robots.

The innovation of the day is the return of pump attendants to service stations. But this time, in the form of robots.

The return to the future of a profession that was thought to be gone forever.

The principle is simple: just stop, as usual, in front of a self-service pump. But no need to go out in the cold or in the rain. Simply launch an app on your phone. Then you choose your fuel, the full tank or the amount in euros. And a robotic arm will serve us, remove the cap, etc.

We have been working on these systems for years, that experiments are multiplying. You may have seen demos in the news. But until now, no commercial service had been deployed. What for? Because it's very complicated to develop. You have to recognize the car, find the gas hatch, open it, some need a key...

Well, we've finally gotten there. The service is now marketed in a network of Scandinavian stations. It targets, as a priority, people in wheelchairs for whom refueling is a real ordeal.

How do they do when the cap has a key?

They send a special cap free of charge when registering for the service... No other solution.

What's new is that the robot also works on electric cars. And there, we have fewer problems since the sockets are standardized.

It is also for charging that these pump attendants are developing the most. We even see the arrival of species of fully autonomous R2D2 that can come to recharge the car directly where it is parked. Example: you arrive in the parking lot of a supermarket. The application geolocates you. You tell him you have 30 minutes, 1 hour... whatever you want. And the robot will leave its terminal, find your car and fill it with electricity during your shopping.

Do these R2D2s already exist?

Yes. Some are already being tested in car parks in Paris and Lyon.

This sector is expected to grow quickly, as giants like Ford, Hyundai and Volkswagen have all just introduced autonomous charging robots. So it could go very quickly. It is still easier to release dozens of robots in a parking lot than to install charging stations.