Volkswagen to Team up with Kuka for Robotic Technology

Leading car manufacturer, Volkswagen has announced that the company will be teaming up with Kuka to develop robots that can play a key role in making life easier for drivers of EVs. The announcement was made at a function that was attended by the Volkswagen CEO, Matthias Müller, Till Reuter, the CEO of KUKA AG and Volkswagen’s Head of Research and Development, Ulrich Eichhorn.

Badly tainted by the diesel emissions scandal, the German automaker is seeking to recoup its position in the market by focusing on autonomous and electric vehicles. Volkswagen had announced last year that it will be spending billions of euros on new development of new mobility services and on electric cars.

Kuka Aktiengesellschaft is a Germany based manufacturer of industrial robots, which is one of the leading companies in this field and has 25 subsidiaries across the globe in countries like Brazil, Japan, India and Russia. The company was acquired by the Chinese firm Midea in 2016.

Kuka will work with Volkswagen on a system that will facilitate the hooking up of electric cars to robots with the help of robots, according to a statement issued by Volkswagen. All the driver has to do is park the car in the designated driving space. The robot will handle the process of connecting the charging cable. The collaboration between the two companies will extend to other projects as well.

Another company that is working hard on automating the charging process is Tesla, which had developed a robot snake charger prototype a few years ago and recently filed a patent for a different technology.