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

Hyundai Motor Company and Kia held an in-house Invention Day event to discover outstanding ideas related to future mobility technologies.

On the 16th, Hyundai Motor Company and Kia announced that they held the '2024 Invention Day' event, an internal patent competition, at the Namyang Research Center in Hwaseong, Gyeonggi Province. This event was organized to discover excellent ideas for future mobility and to encourage creative research and development activities.

At the event, after a rigorous review of over 3,000 in-house invention patents filed last year, awards were given for eight outstanding technology patents.

The grand prize winners included ▲Eco-friendly aviation powernet structure composed of multiple power sources (Senior Researcher Kim Jongpil) and ▲Control method for improving output and durability of fuel cell systems using electromagnets (Researcher Bae Jaegwan). Excellence awards went to ▲Inverter design for modular series-parallel high-voltage system configuration using low-voltage power conversion devices (Senior Researcher Hong Sungmin) and ▲All-solid-state battery including interface coating material substituted with metal having fixed oxidation state (Senior Researcher Seo Imsul).

Encouragement awards were presented to ▲Image variable grille mechanism and scenario (Senior Researcher Yoon Jinyoung), ▲Battery life optimization control technology analyzing user patterns based on cloud (Senior Researcher Kim Juseok), ▲Brake friction noise reduction through disk reflected wave suppression device (Senior Researcher Yoon Jungro), and ▲Obstacle avoidance method based on dynamic obstacle trajectory prediction for safe autonomous driving of robots (Senior Researcher Lee Hwanhee).

Among the awardees, the grand prize-winning patent for the 'Eco-friendly aviation powernet structure composed of multiple power sources' is a next-generation power source structure that can simultaneously utilize batteries and fuel cells. It is expected to significantly increase flight range compared to single power source powertrain systems.

Additionally, Hyundai Motor Company and Kia also held awards for projects securing patents for creative ideas. They operate the 'i-LAB (Intellectual Property - Innovation/Invention/Idea Laboratory)' system, a patent acquisition incubating project. Through this system, in-house inventors, patent managers, and specialized patent offices collaboratively secure a patent portfolio in core future mobility technology fields proactively.

Among over 150 activities, the portfolios for ▲Development of smart mobility thermal energy system (Senior Researchers Jung Sungbin, Song Sangho, and Yu Mi Patent Office) and ▲Development of battery safety diagnosis control logic (Senior Researchers Park Sangdo, Han Mihui, and Taepyeongyang Patent Office) were selected as exemplary cases and rewarded.

Yang Heewon, Head of Hyundai Motor Company and Kia R&D Division (President), stated, "We will strive to secure new technologies that will play a key role in the future mobility sector in advance and expand global research and development intellectual property."

Hyundai Motor Company and Kia are also working to spread a culture of creative idea proposals by implementing the 'Employee Invention Reward System,' which evaluates contributions to technology through internal and external patent filings and utilization, providing inventors with rewards up to 1 billion KRW. As of the first quarter of this year, Hyundai Motor Company and Kia hold approximately 39,000 patents related to future mobility, including electrification (xEV), batteries, robotics, and Advanced Air Mobility (AAM).

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