Hyundai Mobis Hosts 'Autonomous Driving Competition' to Foster Youth Engineering Talent

[Asia Economy Reporter Hyunseok Yoo] Hyundai Mobis announced on the 28th that it held an "Autonomous Vehicle Competition" aimed at nurturing youth engineering talent. The finals, held last weekend at Hana High School in Seoul, saw the participation of about 60 representatives from 11 high school teams nationwide who had passed the preliminary rounds.

Since 2019, Hyundai Mobis has been operating a program teaching high school students how to build autonomous vehicle models and code software algorithms in collaboration with the National Academy of Engineering of Korea and the Convergence Science and Technology Institute at Incheon National University. This year marks the 4th edition.

As part of its social contribution activities, Hyundai Mobis runs the "Youth Engineering Leader" program, consisting of sharing, challenge, and learning activities, to help high school students grow into outstanding software talents. Students participating in the program were provided with up to 20 sessions of online lectures and guidance on autonomous vehicles, including algorithm coding education.

The students participating in the finals created model autonomous vehicles equipped with various sensors such as LiDAR sensors and cameras. During this process, the students demonstrated high-level skills by directly coding software algorithms to ensure the autonomous driving track was navigated without errors. The vehicles applied algorithms for lane recognition driving and stopping upon detecting traffic lights and pedestrians.

The competition was conducted by having each team’s self-produced model autonomous vehicle complete a track designed to closely resemble real environments, including traffic lights and crosswalks, as quickly as possible without errors such as lane departure or ignoring signals.

The championship was won by the IDA team from Hana High School, and a total of three teams received prize money and certificates, including the grand prize and excellence awards. Students who participated in the finals will also have the opportunity to publish papers related to autonomous driving technology in the academic journal "Youth Engineering," published by the National Academy of Engineering of Korea, through their supervising teachers and advisory professors.

Hyunbok Lee, Executive Director of the ESG Promotion Office at Hyundai Mobis, said, "We will continue to actively support nurturing young people interested in science and technology into outstanding software developers," adding, "We will strive to proactively discover future engineering leaders and equip them with future mobility competitiveness such as autonomous driving and robotics."

Meanwhile, the students who participated in this competition also took part as one-day teachers in Hyundai Mobis Junior Engineering Classes, conducting science lessons with elementary school students at local community centers, adding meaningful value. This is part of social contribution activities to spread the knowledge learned through the Engineering Leader program.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.