Dutch robot promises to fill your gas tank, won't clean windshield

As if robots didn't already have enough of our jobs, a group of Dutch inventors have now taken the wraps off their new car-fueling robot, which they hope will one day be filling up your tank at a gas station near your. Coming in at the relatively bargain price of €75,000 (or $111,100), the bot can apparently identify cars as they pull up, and reference them against a database to determine the type of fuel cap and the fuel type to use, which should avoid any mishaps. Somewhat interestingly, the inventors admit that the technology isn't an entirely new idea, and they give credit for the inspiration to the robots used for milking cows, saying that "if a robot can do that then why can't it fill a car tank." While it's apparently not a done deal just yet, the team say they hope to roll out the robot to a "handful" of Dutch gas stations by the end of the year.

[Photo courtesy of Reuters/Michael Kooren]

[E71 @ Feb 4th 2008 1:20PM]

I swear, if that scratches my BMW, some robots gonna have its arm amputated.

[Jagannath A @ Feb 4th 2008 1:32PM]

sssshhhh...

I for one welcome our gas filling robot overlords..

[CT A @ Feb 4th 2008 2:46PM]

You still have to get up and open the gas cap..

[Seoultrain @ Feb 4th 2008 3:58PM]

lol, typical BMW-owner talk. Talk about a car defining its owner.

[wesg @ Feb 4th 2008 8:47PM]

The difference between porcupines and BMWs is that the pricks are on the outside.

[Rocketboy @ Feb 5th 2008 8:16AM]

Ok, if it scratches my MINI, I'll smash it with a baseball bat.

Because only pricks want to keep their cars nice, right?

[anoldcarsnickname @ Feb 22nd 2008 10:24AM]

You are aware that Mini is part of BMW are you? Plus mini's are expensive, but they rock, they rock so hard...

[JLTate @ Feb 4th 2008 1:26PM]

I have a question: Why?

[Jared @ Feb 4th 2008 1:44PM]

It would have been nice here in Minnesota a few weeks back...

[Jared @ Feb 4th 2008 1:45PM]

Sorry , forgot to mention it was -15 degrees with a wind chill of around -45

[Flashpoint @ Feb 4th 2008 1:45PM]

We don't need these expensive robots... not when we've got "GUEST WORKERS"

[Morrison @ Feb 4th 2008 8:10PM]

Handicapped people.

[Ladderless @ Feb 4th 2008 1:30PM]

Around here, nobody has been paid to pump gas for years. I'm not sure whose job would be taken.

[Dave @ Feb 4th 2008 4:00PM]

Oregon.

[trevor @ Feb 4th 2008 4:41PM]

Yeah, it's state law in Oregon that an attendant must pump your gas. I was driving through there a couple weeks ago and, not knowing the law, tried to shoo the attendant away (I thought he was fishing for a tip). The whole experience was funny and awkward at the same time.

But seriously. It's not like pumping gas is a terrible, time consuming deed that needs this sort of "innovation". It's a friggin' gas pump, for pete's sake!

[Aashish Jain @ Feb 4th 2008 1:33PM]

I'd still have to step out twice..
once to swipe my CC and the other to make sure it put the cap back on :)
In all seriousness, it would have to go through many years of real world testing for me to be comfortable enough to have my gas filled at a station that had these robots

[Toadlet @ Feb 4th 2008 1:36PM]

Serious props to the first person who drives up with an electric vehicle.

[Ma2T @ Feb 4th 2008 1:38PM]

My car, a Chrysler (American) but English version, you need to use the car key to remove the petrol cap. No robot can do that without the key.....

[Matt @ Feb 4th 2008 1:50PM]

Ditto.

You can't open UK car caps without the car keys.

Besides... how can the robot tell my engine model? There's no way on my car, externally, to tell the engine type.

besides, they require more energy to run at the gas station, that station could easily charge you more for it.

[MikeLong @ Feb 4th 2008 1:41PM]

I'm sure this will lower gas prices.

[Rocketboy @ Feb 5th 2008 1:32PM]

Because robots are cheaper than pumping your on gas how?

[Rocketboy @ Feb 5th 2008 1:32PM]

Because robots are cheaper than pumping your own gas how?

[MikeLong @ Feb 5th 2008 1:42PM]

sorry.. I forgot to add

[MikeLong @ Feb 5th 2008 1:44PM]

Agh stupid tag not showing up... Anyways. Nice job on the double posts and the excellent sense of sarcasm.

[luke @ Feb 4th 2008 1:43PM]

I suspect this will be big in the states, country of drive through ATMs...
I can't see this being used by the masses in The Netherlands though, at least not for a while

[Prokanda @ Feb 4th 2008 2:02PM]

uh.. what's wrong with drive-up atms? do you like getting out of your car in the rain and being more susceptible to muggings? yes.. American's can be lazy.. but name a country (sans third world) that doesn't have it share of conveniences and lazy people that take utmost advantage of said resources?

almost as bad as the ps3 fan boys... I swear.

[luke @ Feb 4th 2008 2:14PM]

I'm not trying to be offensive here, it's just that when I was in the states I noticed people seemed to take the laziness just a little bit further than in Europe... again, not trying to offend you, just an observation...

[Joshua @ Feb 4th 2008 1:47PM]

i would never let a machine go near my car to fill fuel... last thing i need is scratched paint.

[DT @ Feb 4th 2008 1:48PM]

I have a feeling I know which famous Dutch industry they're designing the next robots for.

[kal326 @ Feb 4th 2008 2:07PM]

What do they need to design? They just need to repurpose some of those milking robots.

[John @ Feb 4th 2008 1:49PM]

Nifty? Yes. Useful? No.

[MadMike @ Feb 4th 2008 1:53PM]

What about New Jersey? It's a law that you can't pump your own gas, the gas station attendant has to do it for you. Besides - 92% of the gas station attendants in NJ are of Middle Eastern or Indian decent. This could put some 200,000 people out of a job. Or worse - they will joing a tech support call center. So now Dell, HP and Lenovo can boast that they got rid of their Indian call centers only for you to call up and get "Yellow - Dis is Jihab, please press the control-alt-delete button on your computer thank you very much."

P.S.: I have nothing against immigrants. My family emigrated from Sicily in the 1900's. Same thing with the Irish and the Germans - yet we all learned the language, the diction and don't have accents (with the exception of people from Massachusetts - You can't understand a word they say).

[DT @ Feb 4th 2008 2:04PM]

I'm sure your Sicilian grandparents learned to eliminate their accent entirely within 20 years of being in this country, right?

I'm in medical school with dozens of second-gen Indian and Asian immigrants, and they don't have a whit of an accent. Their kids probably won't even speak their ancestral language. A study recently showed that third-gen immigrants don't even speak their immigrant grandparent's native tongue, which should give all the Americans terrified of Spanish reason to calm down (of course, if they're terrified of brown people, nothing will calm them down). My grandparents spoke/speak Yiddish, my parents speak Yiddish and English fluently (with ZERO accent) and I can barely understand it.

[JLTate @ Feb 4th 2008 2:36PM]

Why do you assume that because we don't like illegal immigrants we are racist?

I swear, you people must add 1 and 2 to get 12.

[MadMike @ Feb 4th 2008 2:37PM]

Actually, on my mother's side my great-grandmother had a 'slight' accent not hard to understand. She also spoke 5 different languages including English since she was three. I don't actually think my great-grandfather had one, he knew English from a very young age also. Not sure about my great-grandparents on my Father's side - they were dead long before I was born. My grandparents on both sides all were born over here and all spoke normal English.

I guess its true that most 3rd generation won't have an accent. Being in the Fire Department, the language barrier can be dangerous.

[DT @ Feb 4th 2008 3:00PM]

@ JLTate

No, I don't assume that. You must admit that there are racists in this country, and many of them object to immigrants on a spurious argument about them speaking Spanish. I'm all for limiting immigration on economic grounds, but completely against limiting it for racial reasons.

@MadMike

I'm not saying that 3rd-gen immigrants don't have ACCENTS, I'm saying they don't even speak that language at all. It's very hard for a 1st gen immigrant to totally hide their accent (funny how no one seems to mind an English or Aussie accent...it's only the ones attached to people of different ethnicities that bother people or are considered humorous), even if they learn the language well. A 2nd gen immigrant will have no accent at all, and may or may not speak their "mother" tongue, and a 3rd gen won't speak the language at all.

[MadMike @ Feb 4th 2008 3:16PM]

Let me put this into context: I AM NOT AGAINST ANY PEOPLE FROM ANY ETHNICITY OR ORIGIN - SO SHUT IGNORANT PIE HOLE AND LEARN TO READ OR YOU'LL FIND A HALLIGAN BAR SHOVED WHERE THE SUN DON'T SHINE!

I don't like accents that are hard to understand - that included English, Spanish, Italian, German, Irish, Australian, etc... If you LIVE in this country, learn to speak English and speak it so that we can understand you. And if you want to vote me down - think of this, I'm the guy that pulls your sorry ass out of your house when it burns down, asshole.

[ZeroCorpse @ Feb 4th 2008 3:43PM]

I agree MadMike. In fact, I'd love it if those retards in New Jersey would learn to speak proper American English without that terrible accent. Really! When I go to Jersey or call New Jersey on the phone, it's damned impossible to hold a conversation, because some dude named "Mike" or "Lou" will get on the phone and say "Youse gotta press dat button dere. Gaddit?"

Youse guys ah hahrd ta unnarstan.

As for your firefighter crack; My dad was a firefighter, and I don't recall him using popularity points to determine who he rescues and who he doesn't. You must be the star of the fire department over there.

Your xenophobia must be a hit when you visit Manhattan.

[MadMike @ Feb 4th 2008 4:26PM]

ZeroCorpse: I wasn't being serious. We don't go by popularity points. Although we have a lot of Job Justifying Politicians that get involved when a "certain" person or type of person is in peril. Like how the risk a little to save a little adage goes right out the window when the homeowner is a rich friend of politicians. However some of the volly ambulance corps had some media trouble like 10 years ago when it was said they were giving different color people different care or would divert certain people they deemed poor to a different hospital. But that's out past the burbs where you have 18,000 hospitals per township. God forbid Ms. Gotrocks needs to drive her Porsche Cayanne more than 3 miles to get her face lift. We have our local, we have the hospital we transport to and we each have to do 6 weeks in an EMT rotation yearly.

I don't live in NJ - I live in Philadelphia. Besides, I've met maybe two people that actually talked like they do on the Sopranos.

I'm not xenophobic. But I don't actually like Manhattan, way too pricey. Red Bank, NJ is the new hot spot for the clubs.

[hackman @ Feb 4th 2008 9:46PM]

i don't see race

[OneLove @ Feb 4th 2008 2:14PM]

can't we all just get along?

[Starvine @ Feb 4th 2008 2:14PM]

Thank God...I was getting concerned about all of that unecessary energy we were wasting physically leaving our cars to pump gas. Have to conserve precious calories, you know?

[mattwier @ Feb 4th 2008 2:19PM]

Does it pay for you as well?

[Mike @ Feb 4th 2008 2:23PM]

Not when you're making useless comments that don't relate to the original topic, no.

[JLTate @ Feb 4th 2008 2:28PM]

No, and no.

[yishai @ Feb 4th 2008 2:29PM]

By the time the kinks and logistics get hammered out for our gas-dispensing overlords, we will have moved onto non-gas powered cars. (Or so one hopes.)

[stickmanfc73_ @ Feb 4th 2008 2:34PM]

This is dumb lol. Mishaps at the pump? You shouldn't be driving if you are that much of a fuck up. This is a waste of $100 grand. Focus on making a robot that can change our oil and oil filters and I'll care.

[not4no1 @ Feb 4th 2008 2:37PM]

Am I the only one who remembers the Shell gas stations in Indiana(polis) that used a suction cup to open your gas door & what-not.

It was only 1 pump installed away from the others that looked like a drive thru...Shell gas is expensive enough & then they charged a ridiculous premium on top of that...They took them all out, gone for good, don't exist any more, didn’t attract business like expected.

[Calvin @ Feb 4th 2008 2:59PM]

I'm from the Netherlands myself and saw this thing on the news about an hour ago.
The big idea behind it: making it easier for disabled people to use unmanned gas stations. And yes, it opens the fuel caps as well.
Another use would be to make using the pump at night safer 'cause you don't have to leave the car anymore (but how would you pay? :))

[Alex @ Feb 4th 2008 4:54PM]

Created to help the disabled makes sense. A lot of stations in the US only have one attendant and they can't step out to pump someone's gas.