The 150-year-old automotive industry is navigating a period of transformational change and needs to innovate: strict climate regulations, electric vehicle (EV) start-ups disrupting established markets, changing personal travel habits, shipping patterns, and global supply chains are just a few of the forces dictating that established auto manufacturers absolutely must innovate now.
A unique mobility solution–something that drives and walks–presents the immensely difficult design and engineering challenges. One of the most common amongst these is a never-ending quest in the transportation industry: create components that are lighter, but stronger, than past generations of similar components.
Designers and engineers tasked with these “lightweight” challenges frequently look to futuristic materials such as metallic foams, carbon fiber, and new metal alloys, along with modern design techniques such as generative design, for solutions.
Operating at one of the epicenters of global innovation–the region that Apple, Google, Tesla, Twitter, and Stanford call home–Suh is well-positioned to spearhead one of Hyundai Motor Group’s more futuristic approaches to addressing these challenges. Hyundai’s New Horizons Studio believes that the combination of driven wheels and powered legs will result in ground vehicles with unprecedented locomotion capabilities.
The studio aims to contribute to Hyundai Motor Group’s core automotive business as it seeks to expand into new markets that enhance transportation on and off the road.
Generative design to streamline and accelerate the process of developing design ideas and getting to production. In the time a designer can create one idea, a computer can generate thousands, within the constraints provided by the designer, and present those numerous design options with the trade-offs of strength, weight, cost, manufacturing complexity, and sustainability clearly illustrated early in the process.
Generative design streamlines and accelerates the process of developing design ideas and getting to production. In the time a designer can create one idea, a computer can generate thousands, within the constraints provided by the designer, and present those numerous component design options with the trade-offs of strength, weight, cost, manufacturing complexity, and sustainability clearly illustrated early in the process.
In the case of the Elevate concept vehicle, high-torque electric motors are at each joint of the “legs.” This requires structural components to be strong and rigid. But vehicle handling and payload requirements demand they, and the in-motor driven wheels, which are the “feet” of the vehicle, be lightweight.
Creating tools for modern teams of this nature, leveraging the cloud, and a common data platform to ensure everyone’s on the same virtual page: this has been the focus of Autodesk’s Fusion 360 platform since its inception more than seven years ago.
Elevate exists only as a 5:1 scale prototype at this point, so it remains to be seen what’ll come of this fascinating and futuristic Hyundai project. Nevertheless, wrapped in its Transformer-inspired trappings are examples of the potential benefits offered today by a platform that breaks down barriers between design, engineering, and manufacturing; makes broad collaboration seamless by standardizing data; and gives teams access to a state-of-the-art, cloud-powered new process like the generative design.
