Hyundai Mobis has invested in promising start-ups (venture start-ups) in this field to strengthen its competitiveness in core technologies of future automobiles.
Hyundai Mobis once announced its strategy to develop all types of sensors necessary for autonomous operation such as radars and cameras by 2020. Hyundai Mobis is already developing high performance radars that can detect 360 degree of self-driving cars with German radar companies SMS and ASTYX. In the field of cameras, the company plans to change the dominance of the existing market by acquiring deep-learning camera technology.
Hyundai Mobis made an announcement on August 22nd that it recently signed an investment contract with StradVision, a South Korean startup that has deep learning-based camera image recognition technology, in order to secure technologies for sensors in the autonomous driving field. The investment amounts to around 7.1 million dollars. StradVision has software (SW) as a key technology to identify vehicles or pedestrians and recognize road signs (text) using deep-learning methods.
Deep Learning, which is widely known in the IT field in recent years, is an Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology in which a computer thinks and learns like humans. It is characterized by finding similar patterns in numerous data and classifying them accurately and quickly. In the field of automobiles, it is used to accurately read things such as cars, pedestrians, humans and animals.
The purpose of this equity investment is to co-develop advanced camera recognition technologies needed to build a secure autonomous navigation system. Mutual cooperation with start-up companies with superior technology is also meaningful. In the case of start-up venture companies, technology development and market entry can be made even easier by utilizing investment and global network of large companies.
“Promising startups and collaborations will be actively pursued not only in Korea but also overseas countries. We are currently exploring startups in various fields such as AI voice recognition, biometrics, and robot control in Silicon Valley in the U.S. and Shenzhen in China,” said Yang Seung-ook, vice-chairman of Hyundai Mobis ICT Research Center.
Since January of this year, Hyundai Movis has established an organization dedicated to open innovation to secure innovative technologies for the future and to pursue new businesses. Furthermore, it has been working on finding promising start-ups and investing in domestic and overseas markets.
