Hyundai Motor Group Chairman Chung Eui-sun. (Photos: Hyundai Motor Group)

Global companies are scrambling to develop robots as the non-face-to-fact contact market is on the rise, caused by the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Automakers, including Hyundai Motor Group, are joining forces to invest big in the robot industry.

Hyundai Motor’s attempt to acquire an American robot company has become the subject of public attention of late. Hyundai Motor’s bid price is estimated at $1 billion (about 1.1 trillion won), approximately equivalent to the cumulative operation profit the automaker had earned for the first nine months of the year.

The robot company Hyundai Motor is attempting to acquire is Boston Dynamics of the United States, which was spun from MIT Leg Laboratory. The company specializes in research on waling robots.

Business sources said Hyundai Motor’s attempt to acquire Boston Dynamics could not be made without a decision by Hyundai Motor Group’s Chung Eui-sun.

Chairman Chung is drawing a big picture with a future vision of realizing a mobility society through robots, they said.

Why does Hyundai Motor, which has been focusing on wheels such as automobiles and railway cars, acquire a company producing walking robots?

Google took over Boston Dynamics in 2013, but the ownership of the company changed to SoftBank of Japan.

Boston Dynamics was said to find it not easy to collaborate with other subsidiaries of Google, but SoftBank has continuously pursued collaboration by combining the parent company’s experiences in the robot business, a wide range of telecommunications and AI business capabilities.

Under the stewardship of SoftBank Chairman Masayoshi Son, SoftBank Robotics had succeeded in developing the service robot “Pepper.”

(left) One of Boston Dynamics’ representative robots is “Spot,” a four-leg dog robot. Boston Dynamics’ humanoid robot is “Atlas.” (Photo: Boston Dynamics)

If Hyundai Motor’s acquisition of Boston Dynamics is successfully completed, the automaker‘s dream of mobility ranging from walking to aviation will be realized.

Automakers are stepping on the gas to expand the robot business. To automakers, the separating automobiles’ separating from robots cannot be imagined.

In the course of automating the auto manufacturing process, auto plant workers have received support from robots. Automaker’s research on robotics has started from their attempt to raise productivity. Automakers have turned their focus on making wearable robots.

In December 2019, Hyundai Motor Group inaugurated Hyundai Moto-Kia Motors Robotics Lab, an in-house robotics research team.

In the past, conventional teams have implemented pilot projects, the automobile group has begun to explore the robotics business in earnest by inaugurating teams and hiring manpower with a focus on producing wearable robots, service robots and micro mobility robots.

Hyundai Motor unveiled the walking concept car “Elevate” at CES 2019 in Las Vegas in January 2019.