By Jhoo Dong-chan
Hyundai Motor Group Vice Chairman Chung Eui-sun will participate in the year’s Consumer Electronics Show (CES) for the fourth consecutive year.
The company Motor said the nation’s largest carmaker will unveil its plans for the upcoming race in developing self-driving vehicles
To commercially introduce these, Hyundai Motor signed a strategic partnership last week with Aurora, a leading self-driving vehicle tech firm based in the U.S. Hyundai Motor Vice Chairman Yang Woong-chul and Aurora CEO Chris Urmson will give a joint keynote speech during the show this week about the Hyundai-Aurora project.
Urmson was the lead engineer who developed the code running Google’s autonomous software, before leaving the company in 2016. He then founded Aurora with former Tesla Autopilot Director Sterling Anderson and former Uber autonomy and perception lead Director Drew Bagnell.
Aurora has since developed the hardware, software and data services necessary to build an autonomous driving platform, and is now said to have the most advanced technologies on the market.
The Hyundai-Aurora partnership is expected to first focus on the development of hardware and software for autonomous driving and back-end data services required for Level 4 automation.
Level 4 autonomous vehicles, which are defined by the U.S.-based Society of Automotive Engineers, can operate without human input or supervision under selected conditions. The goal of the partnership is to deploy autonomous driving vehicles quickly, broadly and safely.
Hyundai Motor said it will also announce a test drive city for their project soon.
Unlike other global carmakers which choose electric vehicle (EV) for their self-driving projects, Hyundai Motor and Aurora have decided to utilize Hyundai’s fuel-cell electric vehicle (FCEV).
Hyundai Motor first began testing autonomous vehicles on U.S. roads in 2015, after getting a license in Nevada. Last year at the 2017 CES, Hyundai showed that it had advanced its trials to urban environments, demonstrating self-driving technologies to the public with its autonomous Ioniq model.
Chung showcased the demonstration himself as he took his hands off the steering wheel and drank coffee and read a book.
During the event, Hyundai Motor said it will introduce its latest technologies for connected cars.
Partnering with California-based audio recognition and cognition firm SoundHound, the company said it will showcase its connected car cockpit that features audio recognizing interactive systems where a driver can speak orders.
The system will be tested on the nation’s roads in the autonomous FCEV next month.