Hyundai unveils its grand vision for the future and the idea of Metamobility
One thing can be said for certain: Hyundai has ambitious plans for robotics. The carmaker has shown it is willing to put its money into this field, primarily by acquiring Boston Dynamics.
Robotics, as expected, took center stage at the company's presentation at CES 2022. Earlier, Hyundai showed a preliminary version of the Mobile Eccentric Droid, a four-wheeled modular mobile platform. Now the company has outlined broader plans for the future with its new concept of "metamobility" ("metamobility").
Hyundai will say more about its strategy in the future so we can better understand what it might look like in practice. For now, the general idea has been presented under the slogan "Expanding Human Potential," which aims to find the role of mobility and robotics in the virtual reality metaverse.
At this early stage it is hard to separate popular buzzwords from practical implications, but the core component appears to be hardware that serves as a kind of real-world intermediary for interactions with virtual reality. For now, it can simply be said that there are many big promises tied to overcoming the lack of tangibility, which has long been a main problem for VR applications.
“The idea of Metamobility is that space, time and distance will become irrelevant. By connecting robots to the metaverse, we will be able to move freely between the real world and virtual reality. Taking one more step beyond the immersive "be there" proxy experience the metaverse offers, robots will become extensions of our own physical senses, allowing us to change and enrich our everyday lives with Metamobility”
The nearest and most likely use of such technology is remote teleoperation to control a manufacturing robot. This is something Toyota has long been exploring with its T-HR3 system. The company notes that Microsoft Cloud for Manufacturing could serve as a gateway for such remotely controlled work, and it is easy to imagine such a system performing some practical functions.
Other applications go a bit further. Hyundai said: "For example, when a user accesses a digital twin of their home in the metaverse while away from their physical home, they will be able to feed and hug a pet through an avatar robot. This will allow users to enjoy the real world through virtual reality."
At present, such concepts seem largely conceptual, although Hyundai is offering demonstrations at CES of how they might eventually look. Given how many people are currently attending the show virtually amid the latest COVID surge, it is at least easy to see how useful remote operations could become in the future.
Hyundai did not spend all its time in the metaverse at CES. The company also presented a concept called "New Mobility of Things," in which robotics will be used to autonomously move inanimate objects, both large and small.
Under this concept of new mobility of things, the product is called Plug & Drive (PnD). This single-wheel unit has intelligent steering, braking, an electric drive and suspension, along with lidar sensors and cameras that let it detect objects and navigate around them.
These PnD modules are designed to attach to objects such as office desks, for example. A user can tell a desk to come closer to them, or schedule a desk to move at a specific time when more space in the office is needed.
“The PnD module adapts and expands to human needs. In the future world you will not move your things, they will move around you. PnD makes normally inanimate objects mobile. It is this capability that makes it possible to change virtually any space. This is a way to customize spaces on demand”
Hyundai demonstrated a number of PnD applications, including a personal transport system that could take a person to a waiting bus. This capsule, equipped with four PnD modules, then attaches to a "mother shuttle." In theory, the bus would stop while the capsule, with a person sitting inside, continued on to its destination.
This is the idea Hyundai showed in a video featuring an elderly woman. A cane was delivered to her using a single PnD before she climbed into the capsule and rushed to a waiting bus. PnD could also be used, if this ever becomes reality, to provide first- and last-mile public transport without adding many single-occupant large vehicles to the road.
Hyundai also demonstrated another concept called Drive & Lift (DnL), a module designed to lift objects. Hyundai combined DnL with its Mobile Eccentric Droid (MobED) robot. DnL is installed on each wheel of the MobED, allowing it to rise and lower while keeping it level, even when the robot crosses uneven terrain or low obstacles such as steps or speed bumps.
Many companies at CES 2022 focused on products you can find on store shelves, but Hyundai came to the show with a grand vision of the future. The company used its presentation to outline a strategy of "metamobility," in which robots expand human capabilities to such an extent that you could even reconfigure entire rooms or use a robot as a stand-in while you move around the metaverse.
