© EVAR Corp

The company we’re going to introduce today is EVAR, a developer of innovative solutions for electric vehicle charging. Let’s hear from Lee Hoon, the founder and CEO of the company. 

A few years ago, I pre-ordered a newly released electric car that was immensely popular. But it turned out that the charging infrastructure in my apartment complex was rather inadequate. I wondered how to charge an electric vehicle in the parking lot easily without causing inconvenience to neighbors. It came to me that an electric vehicle could be charged by a portable battery charger, just as a mobile phone is charged by a power bank. I worked out the details of this idea and applied for Samsung Electronics’ in-house venture development program known as C-Lab. My project was selected in the program, and that’s what brought me here today. 

EVAR’s idea started from an inconvenience. 

While more and more electric vehicles or EVs are being released these days, the charging facilities available are far from enough. The creation of EV-only sections in public parking lots, which already suffer from a lack of parking spaces, would only cause conflict among drivers.

Aware of this reality, Lee came up with an idea to apply the principle of charging a smartphone with a portable battery charger to electric cars. He worked on his project at Samsung Electronics’ incubating program. His startup, EVAR, was spun off from Samsung last year. After setting up his own company, Lee unveiled his mobile EV chargers. 

We’ve developed two types of chargers in the form of an autonomous mobile robot and a hand-operated electric cart. 

Let me explain the EV charging robot first. You have an EV and you can park it anywhere in the parking lot. What you have to do is mount the adapter developed by our company on the front license plate and connect it to the vehicle charging port. You put your smartphone on the near-field communication or NFC tag attached to the nearest wall or pillar. Then the information about your car and location is transmitted to an EV charging robot stationed in the parking lot. The robot comes to the place where your car is parked and charges it. The adapter mounted on the license plate functions as a docking station connecting the vehicle with the robot. After charging is complete, the robot automatically returns to its original location. 

Using an autonomous driving function, EVAR is the world’s first robot that locates and recharges a vehicle on its own without human help. EVAR stands for “electric vehicle automatic recharging.” 

It is an ideal charging solution for public parking bays at apartment complexes and large buildings. 

The robot’s ultrasonic and light detection and ranging sensors as well as the bumper are designed to recognize the location and detect any signs of danger. Light detection and ranging—LIDAR in short—is an essential function of autonomous driving. The robot can also perform an emergency stop and restart.

It is difficult to figure out a location at indoor parking sites since GPS signals are not received. But building an indoor GPS system costs a lot. So we developed technology to find the location of parked vehicles without altering the parking infrastructure and acquired a patent for it. The technology involves NFC tags attached to pillars in the parking sites. 

As a result, the robot can perform the autonomous driving function properly even in indoor parking lots. Mr. Lee now explains another charger developed by the company. 

© EVAR Corp

EV drivers may use a hand-operated charger that can be positioned somewhere in the parking area. We call the place a charging station. Drivers go to the station and carry the charger to their parking spot, just like when they push a shopping cart. With the charger, they can recharge their car. The charger is quite heavy, weighing about 500 kilograms. But we used technology called physical human-robot interaction, which is applied to wearable robots, so that even the weak and elderly can move the charger easily. 

It is pretty simple to use the cart-type charger. You park your EV in any parking spot you want, go to the charging station and bring the EVAR cart to your vehicle. You don’t need to worry about the weighty charger because it can be pushed by anyone without difficulty, thanks to special technology that detects the force and direction of the pushing and controls the motor drive in real time. 

Once the EVAR cart is carried to the vehicle, you open the cover of the charger and connect the cable with the charging port. When the vehicle is fully charged, you press the “return” button on the screen to let the cart automatically come back to the charging station. Like the EV charging robot, the charging cart has ambient and proximity sensors so it slows down or stops when it detects an obstacle. 

To deploy the solutions on a commercial scale, however, the company needs to ensure greater safety and develop more autonomous driving technologies to be used at indoor parking lots as well. For that purpose, EVAR plans on exploring the feasibility of the new solutions from next year, with a goal to complete autonomous driving technology. 

Autonomous driving should be achieved not only on the roads but on parking sites as well. By developing an EV charging robot, we’ve secured self-driving technology to be used at parking lots. We’ll utilize our technology, expertise and data to put the final touches on autonomous driving. In the process, we also hope to contribute to the wider use of electric vehicles and the solution to fine dust and other environmental problems. 

EVAR is transcending the limits of EV charging. It took only one year for Mr. Lee to create a prototype of the world’s first autonomous EV charging robot while he was under Samsung Electronics’ in-house startup incubation program. Just three months after being spun off from Samsung, EVAR was able to develop a cart-type charger. We’ll definitely keep our eyes on the next step the promising company will take.