New Dutch Robot Pumps Your Gas

Posted 5 Feb 2008 at 18:48 UTC by steve

Reuters is carrying a story about a Dutch robot called TankPitStop that can pump your gas at the gas station. A video of the robot in action is avilable online. The inventor was inspired by seeing cow milking robots, which are now very common in dairy industry. He wondered, "if a robot can do that, then why can't it fill a car tank?". So he built the TankPitStop robot. It is said to work on any car provided the gas tank cover can be opened without a key and the robot has the car's contours and dimensions on file so it can avoid scratching the surface as it moves. As is always the case with the latest robot, they're claiming this is the first ever robot of it's kind but gas pumping robots have been around for at least a decade. Anyone have a link to an older one? The blogosphere seems fascinated by this story.