"Discovering Excellent Ideas" Hyundai Motor Company and Kia Hold Inventors' Day Event

Hyundai Motor Company and Kia announced on the 16th that they held the in-house patent competition event "2023 Invention Day" at the Namyang Research Center. This event aims to discover outstanding ideas that will lead future mobility technologies and to encourage creative research and development activities among employees.

At the event, outstanding patent developers were selected and awarded. Hyundai Motor Company and Kia have been selecting innovative ideas derived from new technologies and vehicle development processes in the R&D sector, supporting patent applications and providing rewards.

Marking its 14th year, the "Invention Day" event featured eight patents that passed a rigorous screening process and advanced to the final round. Among approximately 3,000 in-house invention ideas filed as patent applications last year, 16 excellent patents were selected through the first evaluation, and the award-winning works passed the second evaluation.

The final award-winning works include ▲An anion exchange membrane metal aqueous battery system that captures carbon dioxide to produce hydrogen (Lead Researcher Yoon-Soo Lee) ▲Highly stable all-solid-state battery electrolyte (Lead Researcher Seon-Ho Choi) ▲Enhanced safety door opening prevention structure (Researcher Dae-Young Choi) ▲Body color hidden lighting half painting (Lead Researcher Sung-Ho Park) ▲Auxiliary battery charge/discharge technology using a motor (Lead Researcher Yong-Jae Lee) ▲Haptic device for autonomous driving control authority transfer notification (Researcher Chi-Hong Park) ▲Smart factory logistics robot route optimization control technology (Lead Manager Kyung-Dong Park) ▲Autonomous driving LiDAR recognition performance enhancement technology (Lead Researcher Yoon-Seok Yang).

The final evaluation was conducted through patent assessment and scoring. As a result, ▲Grand Prize was awarded to Lead Researchers Yoon-Soo Lee and Seon-Ho Choi ▲Excellence Award to Researcher Dae-Young Choi and Lead Researcher Sung-Ho Park ▲Encouragement Award to Lead Researcher Yong-Jae Lee, Researcher Chi-Hong Park, Lead Manager Kyung-Dong Park, and Lead Researcher Yoon-Seok Yang.

Additionally, Hyundai Motor Company and Kia operate an incubating project called "i-LAB (Intellectual Property-Innovation/Invention/Idea Laboratory)" as a system to encourage employees' research activities. This project involves collaboration among in-house inventors, patent officers, and specialized patent firms to proactively build promising patent portfolios in core technology fields such as future mobility.

At the event, among the 142 i-LAB activities conducted last year, differentiated customized control technology for eco-friendly vehicles and autonomous driving perception technology portfolios were selected as outstanding cases and awarded.

A Hyundai Motor Company and Kia official stated, "The Invention Day event is the result of collaboration across multiple departments to ensure that employees' creative ideas can be filed as patents. We will continue efforts to discover core new technologies that contribute to new growth areas such as future mobility and to expand global R&D intellectual assets."

Ideas from Hyundai Motor Company and Kia employees selected through Invention Day have also led to actual commercialization. The battery standardization module fastening structure, which won the Excellence Award in 2021, was incorporated into Hyundai Motor Group's dedicated electric vehicle platform, E-GMP. The sound-based emotional care solution portfolio, selected as an excellent i-LAB last year, was applied as a core technology in the development process of virtual driving sounds for major electric vehicles.

Meanwhile, Hyundai Motor Company and Kia are striving to spread a culture of creative idea proposals by implementing the "Employee Invention Reward System," which evaluates domestic and international patent applications and the technological contribution from patent utilization, providing up to 1 billion KRW in rewards to proposers.

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