Auto Charging, Battery Swapping, Hydrogen Refueling | Movingon 3D Camera Enables Unmanned New Energy Refueling

Today, as the penetration rate of new energy vehicles continues to rise, refueling efficiency has become a core pain point in the industry. Manual plug-in/out of charging guns is cumbersome; battery swapping stations require extremely high precision for battery gripping; hydrogen refueling ports, due to their small size and reflective material, pose challenges for many vision systems.

Transfer Technology's Pixel series 3D industrial cameras have been deployed in multiple new energy refueling scenarios, including automatic charging, battery swapping stations, and hydrogen refueling ports. This article combines real project processes and technical parameters to explain how 3D cameras automate the entire refueling operation.

PART1 Outdoor Unmanned Charging

At Li Auto's 5C super charging station, after the vehicle enters the parking space, the robotic arm needs to automatically pick up the gun, locate the charging port, insert the gun for charging, and automatically remove the gun and return it after charging. The entire process requires no human intervention and must accommodate vehicle parking position deviations.

Transfer Technology's Pixel series 3D camera is mounted at the end of the robotic arm. The workflow is as follows: The robotic arm moves the camera to the photo-taking position in front of the charging port; The camera quickly scans the charging port and outputs its 3D pose; Guides the robotic arm to complete the insertion action; after successful insertion, it retracts and waits; After charging is complete, it re-identifies the charging port and guides the removal of the gun.

With its large field of view and sub-millimeter repeatability accuracy, the 3D camera provides stable point cloud data of the charging port in outdoor unmanned charging station scenarios, unaffected by outdoor environmental changes.

PART2 Unmanned Battery Swapping Scenario

Heavy truck battery swapping stations pose higher challenges for vision systems: large vehicle parking deviations, heavy batteries, and the vehicle body floating up or down during swapping. In a large battery swapping station project, TransferTech deployed the Pixel Mini 3D industrial camera using an "eye-in-hand" vision-guided solution to identify and locate the battery frames of light trucks and heavy trucks.

Four vision-guided steps in the workflow: Unlock confirmation: The camera identifies the angle between the locking mechanism tab and the crossbeam to ensure safety; Precise removal: Identifies the center pose of the old battery, guides the robot to remove it and place it into the swapping rack's empty compartment; Empty compartment positioning: After retrieving a fully charged battery from the swapping rack, re-identifies the center pose of the vehicle's empty battery frame; Lock confirmation: After placing the fully charged battery, identifies the locking status of the locking mechanism to prevent accidents.

Camera highlights: Vision recognition accuracy ±0.74 mm, gripping accuracy ±1 mm; Excellent ambient light suppression capability, reducing reliance on shading and supplementary lighting; Can simultaneously handle battery frames of two different sizes (light truck and heavy truck), and can be quickly adapted to new vehicle models in the future.

PART3 Unmanned Hydrogen Refueling Scenario

Hydrogen refueling port positioning is widely recognized as a tough challenge: the hydrogen filling port is made of metal (highly reflective); the black cover is made of plastic (light-absorbing), with a stark contrast in material properties. In a hydrogen refueling project, Movingon used the Pixel Mini camera to simultaneously cover both recognition targets.

Workflow: After the vehicle stops, the first robotic arm carries the camera to take a photo, identifies the black cover, and removes it; Takes another photo to identify the metal inner wall of the hydrogen filling port; The second robotic arm carries the hydrogen gun and inserts it precisely; After hydrogen filling is complete, the first robotic arm reinstalls the cover.

Transfer's 3D vision system achieves single shot + recognition ≤ 4s, recognition/gripping accuracy ≤ ±3 mm, quickly identifies the pose of small-diameter hydrogen refueling ports, guides the robotic arm through the entire process of removing the cover, inserting the hydrogen gun, and reinstalling the cover, unaffected by reflective interference from metal components, enabling unmanned and safe operations at hydrogen refueling stations.