Automated gas

Article: http://www.news.com/Dutch-unveil-robot-to-fill-car-gas-tank/2100-11394_3-6229060.html

The Dutch have created a robot called the "TankPitstop." It is a robotic arm attached to a gas pump that fills your gas tank the same way an attendant would, back in the day of full-service gas stations. In order for it to operate correctly, it uses sensors and a database that stores vehicle dimensions and contours, as well as gas cap designs and fuel types. It must register the car on arrival and match it to its database in order to fuel it.

This is quite an interesting application of a database. While the robot has sensors, they are useless if there is no database to match the sensor readings against. I imagine it works like this: the vehicle pulls up to the pump, and the robot first uses the sensors to determine the make, model, and year of the car so it can find it in the database. Then it determines what fuel type to use. Then it looks up the gas cap design. Finally, using the vehicle's stored dimensions and contours, it removes the gas cap and begins fueling the tank.

There are a few important issues to consider here. Even though the robot stores vehicle dimensions in the database so it can avoid scratching or dinging the car while fueling, there is always room for mistakes. I would be a little weary of letting it fuel the tank of my brand new BMW (this is a scenario in my very VERY distant future, ha) if there's a chance it could malfunction and put a bunch of dings and scratches on my new car.

Another big issue is with customized cars. Many people buy cars and customize them by adding body skits, spoilers, and the like. I would think that if one of these cars pulled up to a robotic gas pump, the sensors would not be able to find a match in the database due to the specs of the car being different from the registered factory specs. Even if it was able to detect it, there would be a bigger chance of the robotic arm scratching the back of the car during fueling due to the car's modifications. I guess these people would just have to make due with getting out of the car and fueling it themselves.

Gas is also becoming more and more expensive and our supply is diminishing quickly. Many experts say that we will run out of gas in as little as 10 years. If this is the case, would it really be economical to implement these costly robots at gas stations, only to become obsolete a few years later? I think not.

Technologically speaking, this is a neat idea...but I don't foresee it ever becoming widespread. Realistically speaking, are we really THAT busy or lazy that we can't even get out of our cars for 2 minutes to pump our own gas?