Hyundai Motor, the largest automobile company in South Korea, is building a self-driving car testbed to give a push to its research and development. On Tuesday, the Korean automobile tech giant announced that the testbed would be made at the Hyundai and Kia Namyang Technology Research Institute in Hwaseong.
The self-driving testbed project will be working in three phases simultaneously. While the first phase will examine the functioning of the demand-responsive Robo Shuttle, in the second phase, the control system in the self-driving car will be tested. Similarly, in the third phase, the company will be constructing parking power to provide infrastructure to the remote autonomous parking technology.
Hyundai ran the Robo Shuttle model in the last two months. The company said it would continue the operations for four units of Robo Shuttle starting from the first week of October. The officials said that the upcoming models would have Level 4 autonomous driving technology, and hence, there will be limited involvement from the driver’s end. Robo Shuttle is likely to be driven in Pangyo by mid-2022.
The company has also announced that it will demonstrate its own web-based self-driving control system soon. With this, users can access their vehicles remotely, and it will also allow users to set a new driving route to avoid any traffic and monitor the self-driving shuttles in real-time.
Hyundai Motor will be completing an eight-story autonomous parking tower by 2022. This tower is being built at Namayang R&D center, which will accommodate around six hundred autonomous cars.
Jang Woong-jun, the vice president and head of the Hyundai autonomous driving unit, spoke to the media regarding the tech testbed. “We seek to enhance the recognition, judging, and controlling functions of our autonomous driving technology with the new testbed in Namyang R&D Center,” he said while addressing the media.
The company is expecting a significant development on its autonomous cars unit by the first half of the following year. With the ongoing research and development being conducted rapidly, the market may expect Level 5 self-driving models to soon launch in South Korea. While there’s no official comment on the vehicles’ launch, the process is taking Hyundai Motor nearer to announcing the launch date.
