Hyundai Motor, Kia Hold 2026 Idea Festival to Discover Future Mobility Ideas
TECHWORLD ·
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Hyundai Motor and Kia held the "2026 Idea Festival" to turn employee ideas into actual products and services and to uncover future mobility technologies.
Six teams that passed the preliminary review spent about four months creating outcomes, and six works including "Trifold Luggage Board" were entered in the finals.
The grand prize went to the M.S.V.2 team for "Trifold Luggage Board," while the excellence awards went to the T4B team for "Eye-Bridge" and the Comfort Drive team for "Motion Sickness Zero."
Hyundai Motor and Kia held the "2026 Idea Festival" to turn employee ideas into actual products and services and to uncover future mobility technologies. The event, an in-house idea competition held every year since 2010, marked its 17th edition this year. It was hosted by the R&D Division and the AVP Division.
This year's event was held to mark the 30th anniversary of the completion of the Namyang Research Center, and the theme was set as "Origin of the next." Hyundai Motor and Kia began collecting future mobility ideas from employees last April.
Six teams passed the preliminary review, and the six teams received production funding and space to build physical prototypes. Over about four months, each team turned its idea into a real outcome. Hyundai Motor and Kia held the final competition on the 19th at the Namyang Research Center in Hwaseong, Gyeonggi Province.
The finals featured entries including "Trifold Luggage Board," "Hero Recorder," "Eye-Bridge," "Pin Print Seat," "Nulbom," and "Motion Sickness Zero." "Trifold Luggage Board" is a project aimed at improving trunk usability, while "Hero Recorder" records a commercial vehicle driver's day on video.
"Eye-Bridge" is a smart glass device that helps visually impaired pedestrians, and "Pin Print Seat" is a project featuring a shape-adjustment function tailored to a child's body. "Nulbom" is an AI-based infant monitoring technology, and "Motion Sickness Zero" is a motion-sickness reduction project that uses ambient lighting and a rear-seat screen.
The judging was conducted with five experts in the R&D field and 100 employees evaluating the entries on implementation, originality, technological fit, customer orientation, vision, and other criteria.
As a result, the grand prize went to the M.S.V.2 team, which developed "Trifold Luggage Board." The excellence awards went to the T4B team, which presented "Eye-Bridge," and the Comfort Drive team, which developed "Motion Sickness Zero."
Hyundai Motor and Kia introduced cases in which technologies that started at the Idea Festival were applied to actual vehicles. "Multifunction Console," a 2021 excellence award winner, went into mass production as Santa Fe's "Bi-directional Multi Console." "Day-Easy," the grand prize winner in 2023, is currently being demonstrated with LG Uplus. Last year's excellence award-winning "trailer towing performance improvement software" was applied to the fifth-generation Tucson sold in North America and Europe.
Lee Jae-gyu, executive vice president in charge of vehicle development 1 at Hyundai Motor and Kia, said the Idea Festival is a starting point for connecting employee ideas with actual technologies and customer value. He also said the company will continue innovating its R&D culture to lead the future mobility market.
This year, Hyundai Motor and Kia launched and are operating the in-house hackathon "24H Code Race" to spread a culture of software innovation and advance its AI transformation. In August, a hackathon centered on Pleos app development was held, and the grand prize went to "TaleSync," an audio story app whose content changes based on a child's reactions. Hyundai Motor and Kia plan to review the feasibility of installing the winning entries and other major ideas in actual vehicles.
Source: TECHWORLD · Kim Seung-gi
Original: https://www.epnc.co.kr/news/articleView.html?idxno=408389
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Source: TECHWORLD
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