I Visited Hyundai’s AI-powered Robo-Factory That Builds AI-Powered Robotaxis

The rise of and transition to electrification is altering the best way we take into consideration designing, driving and refueling (or bidirectionally recharging) our vehicles. However for automakers such because the Hyundai Motor Group, there’s one other reimagination taking place on the manufacturing stage with the potential to reshape the best way vehicles will likely be constructed sooner or later, close to and much. 

I not too long ago visited the prototype for Hyundai’s manufacturing ambitions, the brand new Hyundai Motor Group Innovation Middle in Singapore, to see how the Korean automaker is leveraging synthetic intelligence, versatile manufacturing processes and a excessive degree of automation to rethink the way it develops, builds and educates the general public about electrical vehicles.

Learn: Best Electric Cars and EVs for 2023

Touring HMGICS

Along with being a manufacturing unit the place Hyundai EVs are assembled, the Innovation Middle can also be designed to be a hub the place Hyundai’s designers, engineers and exterior improvement companions can come collectively to share concepts surrounding automotive and manufacturing know-how. It is also an space the place clients can find out about and expertise Hyundai’s electrical vehicles. 

There are flooring devoted to collaborative workspaces, an automatic hydroponic farm within the foyer rising greens which can be served within the cafeteria and a buyer expertise heart on the highest ground full with a rooftop check observe the place company can expertise Hyundai’s electrical vehicles. The 618-meter (simply over a 3rd of a mile) oval observe is so giant that it extends over the constructing’s edge and has 37-degree banked turns. Particular vibration mounts allow speeds as much as round 51 mph with out shaking the constructing or disturbing the delicate gear down on the manufacturing unit ground. It was raining on the day of my go to, so I wasn’t capable of go for a spin, nevertheless it appears to be like hecka enjoyable.

On my tour, I observed that the manufacturing unit itself was a lot quieter than the dozen or so conventional factories that I’ve toured over a decade and a half masking the automotive business. I did not want listening to safety and we had been capable of comfortably stroll the ground. It is so quiet that Hyundai was capable of plop assembly areas proper in the course of the manufacturing unit the place engineers, designers and manufacturing specialists can meet to collaborate on methods to design future automobiles with automated manufacturing in thoughts.

That is partially as a result of excessive degree of automation and robotics used, but in addition as a result of HMGICS is an meeting plant. Physique panels, elements, and electrical powertrain parts are shipped in from exterior amenities and suppliers after which assembled in Singapore versus, say, Rivian’s factory in Normal, IL the place sheet metallic is being stamped on noisy megaton presses simply on the opposite aspect of the room.

I wasn’t capable of see the primary ground, the place automated elements unloading and sorting tie immediately into logistics methods on the Port of Singapore. This enables HMGICS to order precisely the elements it wants and exactly observe them as they enter the manufacturing unit, a bonus that may play a bigger position as the power expands the number of automobiles it builds. Nevertheless, I used to be capable of get a peek into the mind heart of the power the place solely round 16 folks — with the help of AI-powered methods and a dizzying quantity of knowledge — maintain tabs on each conceivable aspect of the manufacturing course of.

Meeting with out the road

Proudly owning a automotive in Singapore is dear. Simply getting the certificates of entitlement that allows you to purchase a automotive can cost thousands of dollars, and that is earlier than you even pay for the automotive itself. The town-state is small (solely round 36 miles throughout at its widest) nevertheless it’s additionally one of many world’s wealthiest international locations per capita and residential to employees within the tech, vitality and industrial sectors, so HMGICS’ restricted quantity of round 30,000 vehicles per yr — solely round 10% that of a standard mass manufacturing meeting plant at full swing — is a fairly good match for the area and permits Hyundai to experiment with versatile manufacturing with no fastened meeting line.

Go into a traditional automotive manufacturing unit and search for; you may most likely see a community of inflexible overhead rails that strikes every chassis by the assorted phases of the meeting course of — from welding to color to inside set up to closing touches and extra. There aren’t any inflexible strains at HMGICS, slightly automobile shells and parts are moved across the manufacturing unit ground on robotic palettes of various dimension that may go just about the place they’re wanted and meeting is damaged up into “nodes” that may be bypassed, added to or subtracted from the method relying on the wants of every particular person automobile. 

Hyundai’s manufacturing engineers use a digital twin — a digital illustration of your complete manufacturing unit — to simulate and optimize the trail that every chassis takes by the method, dashing up manufacturing but in addition permitting the flexibleness to, for instance, utterly reshape the manufacturing unit ground, run a half-dozen various kinds of EVs alongside the identical meeting line or pull particular person automobiles apart for bespoke customization.

Robotic co-workers

Even the employees at HMGICS have been augmented. Human manufacturing unit workers make use of exoskeleton and augmented actuality know-how to assist them work extra comfortably, effectively and safely. 

For instance, I noticed a lady assembling door playing cards for the Ioniq 5 — a job that may be onerous on the again as a result of bending required — making use of a passive lower-body exoskeleton that allowed her to stroll and transfer freely, however then immediately half-sit on deployable legs slightly than bend. One other employee beneath a raised Ioniq used a spring-loaded arm exoskeleton to scale back fatigue and pressure when putting in fasteners above his head, whereas one other installer used an augmented-reality show to view data and step-by-step directions on the subsequent station.

In the meantime, a cohort of robotic coworkers toil alongside these augmented people. At one station, a Spot robot dog — from now HMG subsidiary Boston Dynamics — outfitted with a digicam checks behind a human employee to substantiate that the suitable parts have been correctly put in earlier than the automobile strikes alongside. (Sure, it is a bit Black Mirror, however HMGICS workers tells me that the double examine improves high quality management.) Elsewhere, a trash can-shaped bot harking back to R2D2 dutifully rolls from station to station, studying shows that management the huge robotic arms lifting seats, dashboards, bumpers and heart consoles into place, and serving to to foretell when the large bots will want servicing. 

Many nodes are utterly manned, so to talk, by robots — such because the automated driver help calibration station the place a half-dozen tiny bots holding black and white sensor targets dance round every outbound Ioniq 5 whereas the EV’s digicam and sonar sensors dial themselves in. Even the parking of accomplished automobiles is dealt with by flat robotic dollies that tuck underneath and raise every automotive earlier than sliding them exactly and tightly collectively for storage earlier than delivery out.

Hyundai Ioniq 5-based Robotaxi

At present, HMGICS produces solely the Hyundai Ioniq 5 EV however to display the flexibleness of lineless meeting, a portion of the throughput splits off halfway by meeting to develop into Ioniq 5-based Robotaxis certain for operation in permitted US markets. 

Every Robotaxi is outfitted with round 30 extra sensors — together with lidar, radar and cameras — for 360 levels of precision protection earlier than its processing {hardware} is put in within the trunk beneath the ground. Extra pixel-style mild segments are added to the outside to assist visible communication with riders, different drivers and pedestrians and shows are added to the entrance seat backs for passengers to peruse details about their autonomous trip.

The AI software program and {hardware} powering the Ioniq 5 Robotaxi was developed by Motional, a three way partnership between Hyundai and automotive supplier Aptiv, and designed to combine immediately with the Ioniq 5’s energy and management {hardware} for simple manufacture in amenities like HMGICS. After splitting off to obtain their additional gear, the Robotaxis are then capable of seamlessly rejoin the primary meeting queue for a similar ending and high quality assurance and closing checks because the vanilla EVs.

The versatile manufacturing unit of the longer term

In line with VP and Head of Hyundai’s Good Manufacturing facility Expertise Innovation Group Alpesh Patel, the teachings discovered from constructing two variants of the Ioniq 5 will enable HMGICS so as to add the Ioniq 6 and three more E-GMP-based Ioniq models to its output subsequent yr. Subsequent on the roadmap is a brand new purpose-built vehicle designed across the automated manufacturing course of and, finally, the power’s versatile manufacturing unit mannequin could even accommodate an excellent wider gamut of electro-mobility automobiles — from e-scooters to walking cars, mobility pods, eVTOL aircraft and even bespoke one-off customs. The sky is the restrict as Hyundai fine-tunes its capacity to utterly reconfigure its manufacturing unit at a second’s discover.

Hyundai can also be exploring how the compact design and buyer going through facets of HMGIC — a microfactory that is mainly the center of a dense city heart — may be replicated and remixed around the globe to satisfy the precise e-mobility wants of different markets, maybe even a metropolis close to you.