Dr. Tae Won Lim, Senior Vice President, Research and Development Division at Hyundai, gave a plenary talk about Hyundai’s efforts to build cars that are in line with global megatrends, namely, urbanization, aging society, air quality, and connectivity.
As with other carmakers, Hyundai is keenly aware of the green movement.
Environmentally friendly vehicles accounted for a mere 3% last year – with even these being mostly hybrid vehicles and not zero emissions vehicles, but the green car market is expected to grow 15% to 100 million cars by 2020. Hyundai expects to have 28 models of environmentally friendly, full green cars on the market by then. Their vision for a connected car is a “hyper-connected intelligent” one. They are also aggressively developing their autonomous driving capabilities – setting their sights on fully autonomous driving by 2030.
However, by far, their most fascinating and exciting research lies in their efforts to develop a new form of mobility with a concept similar to that of an “exoskeleton.” In a video presentation, Dr. Lim spoke about the exoskeleton platform for medical purposes (for paraplegics to regain “full-spectrum” mobility, even for those with zero mobility); life-caring or military purposes (for the elderly to recover their mobility and improve their quality of life; or for military personnel to exploit “load-carrying capability augmentation”); and industrial purposes (for workers to augment their own strength and/or prevent back injury).
Dr. Lim expressed Hyundai’s desire to “provide a sense of caring for people with mobility difficulties.” Clearly, this technology will have far-reaching implications in the aging and mobility-challenged populations, especially in a time where both the elderly population and spinal cord injuries are increasing. Korea is the fastest aging society in the world, and with increasing numbers of drivers, traffic accidents are causing more spinal cord injuries. Robotic technology, Dr. Lim suggests, could help to improve the quality of life for these groups of people.
IROS 2016 is currently being held in Daejeon, Korea at the Daejeon Convention Center (DCC).
