Earlier this year, Hyundai Motor Group (HMG) invested $400 million to make robots smarter. It bought Boston Dynamics in 2020, and since then, the company has offered its vision of what the future might look like, from robots to citywide concepts.
The automaker today announced a virtual exhibition that puts its big ideas into focus. The exhibition showcases the HMG greenfield smart city that debuted during this summer’s World Cities Summit. The company collaborated with HyunJoon Yoo Architects on the project, creating a hexagonal-shaped city that puts humans at the center of its design. This is a stepping stone for Hyundai as it begins to learn and understand how cities operate to provide solutions that benefit citizens.
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The city’s design places green spaces in the center, with buildings surrounding parks, forests, water reservoirs, and more. While Hyundai has a big hand in the automotive sector, its city’s road infrastructure is invisible underground, where autonomous vehicles transport goods and services to regional hubs. The robot will make the final deliveries in Hyundai’s future, which is all about clean energy and sustainability. The virtual city gets its power from a hydrogen fuel cell generator that distributes electricity through a smart grid. You can experience the exhibition here.
Designing a city seems like an ambitious feat for Hyundai, but the company has been thinking about mobility solutions for a while. In January, the automaker showcased its Plug & Drive robotic platform that can attach to small objects and make them move using LiDAR and electric propulsion, such as goods in a warehouse. The platform is powerful enough to move people around, with a joystick providing control.
“Cities are complex organisms, and it’s difficult to plan one perfect city, but such thought exercises will help point us in the right direction,” said Youngcho Chi, president and head of innovation at HMG.
Hyundai’s grand vision for the cities of the future is fantastic. However, robots and autonomy can change the way we get and move things, although truly autonomous vehicles are years or decades away from becoming a reality.
