Elon Musk just tweeted some pretty exciting news. In the future, Tesla owners won’t have to worry about plugging in their cars. Robot snake arms will do it for them.
No, seriously:
Btw, we are actually working on a charger that automatically moves out from the wall & connects like a solid metal snake. For realz.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 31, 2014
He added in a follow up tweet, “This can be used with all existing Model S cars, not just futures [sic] ones.”
The idea isn’t even that far-fetched. Just a couple of weeks ago, we saw the OC Robotics’ Series II – X125 system snakebot (pictured in the above GIF) which can be used for a number of practical purposes. The Biorobotics Lab at Carnegie Mellon University has also been working on robotic snakes for years.
There’s no indication that Tesla will use either of these technologies for its own snakebots, and we’ll remain slightly skeptical until we actually see those Tesla-branded version in action. But at least there’s some proof of concept out there in the world. And what an awesome concept it is! [Elon Musk via TechCrunch]
