Hyundai’s TIGER ‘ultimate mobility vehicle’ concept is the size of a domestic cat

The audience had their first glimpse of Hyundai’s Ultimate Mobility Vehicle (UMV) concept, the Elevate, at CES 2019. The crowds present were presented with scenes of disaster, destruction and desolation like the robot the size of a car with wheels for feet at the ends of their extensible articulated legs they drove, rolled and walked like a crab to help people in need. On Wednesday, Hyundai showed the results of its subsequent development efforts with the unveiling of its new TIGER (Transforming Intelligent Ground Excursion Robot) program concept, the X-1 – just don’t expect it to rescue anything bigger than one. kitten for now.

“Vehicles like TIGER and the technologies that support them give us the opportunity to boost our imagination,” said Dr. John Suh, head of Hyundai’s newly formed New Horizons Studio, in a statement. “We are constantly looking for ways to rethink vehicle design and development and redefine the future of transportation and mobility.”

Unlike Elevate, the TIGER is Hyundai’s first UMV designed to operate autonomously. As such, its first tasks involve transporting cargo, equipment and supplies on challenging terrain instead of humans, or operating as a sensor platform and mobile scientific exploration in remote locations.

To reach its destination, the TIGER X-1 (“prototype eXperimental-1”) can drive like a conventional AWD vehicle when its legs are retracted; or you can lock each wheel individually and extend your legs to walk, jump or crawl through barriers, shoulders and gaps in your path.

Although Elevate has been described as a vehicle capable of transporting adult humans, New Horizons Studio is starting out smaller with TIGER. “The X-1 is the size of hand luggage in dimensions,” Suh ​​told reporters in a recent press call. “About 50 by 30, maybe 18 centimeters today.”

“We have been focusing more on the technology features of the TIGER X-1 and, in future versions, we will work to increase the size and payload capacity,” he continued. “At the same time, we had to gather some insights from our future customers about what they need in terms of size and capacity.”

Headquartered in Mountain View, California, New Horizons Studio has already started looking to its Silicon Valley neighbors for assistance in developing TIGER, including Autodesk and design company Sundberg-Ferar. Autodesk is lending its experience in additive manufacturing and is working to develop lightweight carbon fiber components for future X prototypes. Sundberg-Ferar, on the other hand, is looking after the vehicle’s external design and capabilities.

“During the development of TIGER with New Horizons Studio, the Sundberg-Ferar team was looking to create a robot that would maximize the efficiency of the movement of the wheels with the articulation of a quadruped to expand the possibility of reaching more remote locations,” David Byron , manager of Design and Innovation Strategy at Sundberg-Ferar, said in a statement. “TIGER is a modular platform design that allows different bodies to be attached to the chassis for exclusive applications, such as cargo delivery or surveillance in locations not suitable for humans.”

Hyundai is already thinking about uses for its “leggy car” design in addition to disaster response and cargo transportation, including autonomous wheelchair taxis that can climb up to a person’s front door, allowing them to drive smoothly. Of course, New Horizons has yet to invent, develop or mature a number of TIGER’s internal systems before this happens, including “locomotion by wheel, high-performance materials, structures and energy systems; chassis and body systems, virtual development and evaluation and design systems and human-centered systems ”, by Hyundai.

“There are many technical obstacles that we need to overcome in order to have the flavor of a science project,” admitted Suh. “But our great desire is to make it a product. One day, for sure. “