[Digital Today Reporter Cho Shin-eum] Chairman Chung Eui-sun left for the United States and visited the headquarters of the autonomous driving joint venture ‘Motional’ and the robot company ‘Boston Dynamics’.
This is the first time that Chairman Chung has visited Momental since the Hyundai Motor Group’s investment announcement.
Chairman Chung’s departure from the United States contains the will to successfully promote the ‘great transformation into a new growth engine’ emphasized in the New Year’s message earlier this year by strengthening business competitiveness in innovative technologies such as autonomous driving, which is considered to be a key technology that will change the paradigm of the mobility industry. it can be seen that there is
Hyundai Motor Group established Momental, a joint venture for autonomous driving with Aptiv in March last year and is accelerating the development of the ultimate autonomous driving platform. Momental was established through a 5-to-5 equity investment between Hyundai Motor Group and Aptiv. It combines Hyundai Motor Group’s design, development, and manufacturing capabilities with Momental’s autonomous driving solution to become a robo-taxi and ride-sharing service company and global automaker. It is accelerating the development of an autonomous driving platform to supply to companies.
The collaboration project between the two companies was also checked, such as directly testing the Ioniq 5, which applies the next-generation autonomous driving platform being developed by Motional. The Ioniq 5 is a car with level 4 autonomous driving technology applied. It is currently being tested on American test roads. Hyundai Motor and Motional engineers plan to use the IONIQ 5 in Lyft and the robo-taxi commercialization service that is being promoted after more advanced technology.
At the same time, they visited Motional’s Pittsburgh base, which is responsible for developing Momental’s core technologies for autonomous driving, and inspected facilities and infrastructure for designing and remodeling autonomous vehicles and listening to the opinions of researchers.
Meanwhile, Chairman Chung Eui-sun visited the headquarters of Boston Dynamics, which is being acquired by Hyundai Motor Group, and exchanged general opinions on the future and trends of the robot industry with local executives.
In Boston Dynamics, Boston Dynamics’ production-type quadrupedal robot ‘Spot’, ‘Atlas’ that walks upright like a human, and ‘Stretch’ that can load and unload up to 23 kg of load Experienced various cutting-edge robot technologies. Stretch will be commercialized for the second time next year after Spot.
Boston Dynamics started as an in-house venture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1992, and is currently being evaluated as possessing the world’s best technology in comprehensive aspects such as autonomous driving (walking), cognition, and control, which are essential for robot operation.
The Hyundai Motor Group’s acquisition of Boston Dynamics follows the expectation that the global robot market will grow rapidly due to technological innovation and demand for automated robots. Hyundai Motor Group plans to provide customers with a higher level of experience and value beyond expectations by fostering robotics as a core future business field.
In addition to improving the group’s own robot development capabilities, the group plans to actively seek synergies with autonomous vehicles, urban air mobility (UAM) and smart factory technologies. Amid the global mega-trend represented by aging and untact, the role in the public domain such as safety, security, health, and disaster relief using robots is also expected.
At a town hall meeting held for group employees in March, Chairman Chung Eui-sun said, “In the future, I think robots will play the role of assistants who help people at all times.” “While robots charge themselves and manage schedules, People will be able to focus on more productive, creative work.”
Author/ Translator: Jamie Kim
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