By now, you’ve probably seen footage of Tesla’ s robotic snake arm that the company demonstrated back in August 2015. If you’ve been having nightmares of it sneaking up in your bed and biting you while you’re sleeping, then you’re not alone. I’ve had a few sleepless nights myself. But, outside of its appearance that reminded me of one of Dr. Octopus’ arms, the whole purpose of that robotic snake is important in the evolution of Tesla’s new “summon” feature.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk announced in a recent conference call the new features of the version 7.1 software update, one of which is the aforementioned summon feature that makes it possible for a Tesla to park by itself. According to Musk, the wall- or ceiling-mounted droid, or at least some updated version of it, will also be available in the future. Musk didn’t give a specific timetable on when our future overlords will arrive, but he did say that it would be packaged in such a way that its creepiness would be dialed down to a certain extent. The Tesla CEO also added that its nation-wide Supercharger network would get first dibs on the feature.
In other news, development of Tesla’s Autopilot feature is progressing to the point that it’s now “better than human”, especially in certain driving situations like staying in one lane. Having said that, the feature is still in its embryonic stage and it could take up to 36 months for the feature to get all of its kinks in order. Once it’s fully operational, the Autopilot feature would allow Tesla vehicles to drive from coast to coast.
This is almost certainly how those human-hunting sentinel robots from the Matrix movies first came to be, so thanks, Tesla.
If you can look past the possibility of being enslaved in your own home by a 240-volt robot snake, Tesla’s charger prototype is actually pretty cool. Shown doing its thing in this video, the segmented, metal, snake-like cable could potentially be used at Tesla’s supercharger stations or in home garages. Tesla drivers would just pull their cars up next to it and let the automated cable do the rest.
Original published at "topspeed" website.
Charger prototype finding its way to Model S
Charging the Tesla Model S
