PRE2015 4 Groep3

Members of this group:

• Maurits Ambags - 0771400
• Wesly Chu - 088994
• Arthur Geel - 0907552
• Jasper Sparla - 0844019
• Twan Weernink - 0851703

Potential ideas for this project

• Autonomous Tanking Stations
• Guidance system for elderly/demented people
• Cleaning robots for in café's/bars
• Delivery robots in buildings (Packages, but also for food/drinks)
• Cooking robots
• Agriculture robots (Both for small greenhouses as for big fields)
• Window cleaning robots

Introduction

In present day, refueling cars is a process that is still being done manually. Users are expected to correctly determine which fuel their vehicle requires, connect the fuel hose to their car and supervise the process of refueling the vehicle. Each of these activities is very trivial to the common user, however has serious consequences if done incorrectly (either engine failure or a fire of sorts). Therefore, they pose quite a danger to users, as the lack of attention may result in unsafe conditions. Secondly, the whole process takes considerable time, and automating the process may allow users to head into the pump building to pay and/or drink their coffee while their vehicle is being refueled. This would increase the throughput of fuel pumps as well.

Requirements

Our intention is to provide a robotic support to refuel vehicles. We wish to provide an external tool, as opposed to integrating this robot into the fuel pump. This should allow pump owners to more easily adapt to this technology without significantly restructuring their buildings, as well as come at a lower cost overall for new pumps. This robot should be able to lift a fuel hose out of its holder, locate the vehicle's fuel inlet, possibly remove the cap of this inlet and insert the nozzle. After the tank has been filled, the robot places the hose back into its holder and (possibly) notifies the car owner.

In order to allow the robot to move about fuel hoses, we will need a mechanism for grabbing a hose. Current fuel hoses are designed in a way that humans can grab them easily. It seems overly complicated to mimic this behaviour, as making a robotic hand is a different challenge in itself. We see more potential in the use of magnets here. The robot would have a magnet that connects to a metal plate on the fuel hose. This would require some modification to the fuel nozzle, but leaves the rest of the pump as is.

Stakeholders

The stakeholders in this scenario are primarily the owners/employees of fuel pumps, and the customers that use them. One could argue that, since these changes affect the safety of all car users (which happens to be the vast majority of the adult society), this impacts society as a whole, but we will only consider customers for now.

The employees will see a more efficient (and hopefully safer) environment at their pump. They may now have some extra tasks regarding robot maintenance, but there are also benefits, as the employees are not alone anymore in supervising the pump. Pump owners may see an increase in the profitability of their pump, since the efficient refueling may allow them to service the same amount of customers with fewer pumps, or service more with their current setup. Also, customers will spend more time inside the store, which may lead to more store purchases.

Customers will see their time spent at fuel pumps decrease. While this may not be that important to some, professional drivers like truckers will benefit from any time they can save. Of course, the fuel pump should be a safer place for the customers as well, although this will likely go unnoticed.