CES 2022: Hyundai Plug & Drive revealed

A scalable one-wheeled electric ‘vehicle’ that can work individually or as part of a team is a star attraction for a robot-focused Hyundai Motor Group at the 2022 CES technical fair in Las Vegas.

PnD – short for Plug & Drive – combines steering, braking, in-wheel electric drive and suspension into one unit with infinite wheel rotation, meaning it can spin 360 degrees on the spot.

LiDAR and camera sensors allow it to move autonomously.

PnD can act alone to carry out simple functions – a video showed it delivering a walking cane to an elderly woman. Later, the same woman was being transported in a pod powered by four PnDs.

But Hyundai also envisages PnDs being used in multiples for tasks such as creating mobile hospital units.

“The PnD module is adaptive and expandable to match human needs. Because in the world to come, you won’t move your things – they will move around you,” said Dong Jin Hyun, vice-president and head of robotics lab of Hyundai Motor Group.

“PnD makes normally inanimate objects mobile. It’s this ability that makes changing practically any space possible. It’s a way to configure spaces on demand.”

Hyundai calls this concept the ‘Mobility of Things’.

“We are directing all our robotics engineering and creative efforts toward building the unlimited Mobility of Things ecosystem,” said Hyun.

“The goal is for robotics to enable all kinds of personal mobility, connected to communicate, move and perform tasks autonomously.”

Hyundai also exhibited the MobED (Mobile Eccentric Droid) small mobility platform first revealed last December with a new function called Drive & Lift (DnL).

Based on an eccentric wheel mechanism that combines the drive, steering and braking systems into one structure, the body can stay level as the MobED traverses uneven terrain or low barriers such as steps or speed bumps.

Both these debuts tied back into HMG’s overarching theme at CES, which basically boiled down to: ‘How good is robotics?’

The live and streaming audience at the press conference were subject to a utopian vision of happy people being transported around neat and traffic-jam-free neighbourhoods in pods and shuttles, along the way taking a virtual reality trip to Mars just for the heck of it.

HMG envisions a world where virtual reality – or the metaverse – becomes more realistic thanks to robotics. It used the practical example of someone in the US feeding and hugging their pet in South Korea via virtual reality with robots doing the physical bit.

Hyundai calls this mirroring Metamobility.

Cars were barely mentioned in the 45-minute presentation, except for assurances that virtual reality, artificial intelligence and robotics was a good thing.

“The way we look at it it’s not the end of the car as we know it, but it’s the beginning of the car as we will know it,” said Chang Song, HMG’s head of transportation-as-a-service.

“Cars will evolve from mobility devices into smart devices, just like every smartphone but on a larger scale … They will grow into a smart access platform.

“We are already transforming [the car] into a new living space. The metaverse will enrich that experience. At any moment you can enjoy entertainment, play 3D video games or participate in meetings.

“The possibilities are endless.”

Robotics is not a new field for HMG. It has a majority stake in robot specialist Boston Dynamics and as far back as CES 2017 it was showing off flying cars that transformed into living rooms.