January 14, 2024
Kisun Chung, vice chairman and CEO, HD Hyundai
HD Hyundai, Seoul, South Korea, vice chairman and CEO Kisun Chung shared his company’s vision to expand innovation during his keynote speech at CES® 2024 in Las Vegas. The event took place Jan. 9-12.
HD Hyundai refers to “Xite Transformation” as a vision and solution to create a more sustainable future for humanity, the company said. The company had a booth highlighting three main zones: Future Xite, Twin Xite and Zero Xite. An individual from Hyundai Construction Equipment Americas, Norcross, Ga., provided a remote control demonstration of a concept machine wheel loader located in Atlanta, nearly 2,000 miles from the Las Vegas Convention Center. He demonstrated some of the new safety features, including a transparent bucket and an object detection system.
A 15-ft.-tall unmanned wheel excavator greeted visitors as they entered the company’s exhibitor’s booth. Hyundai Construction Equipment Americas and Develon, Suwanee, Ga., both fall under the HD Hyundai umbrella.
“The construction industry has laid the foundation for human civilization, and yet it remains one of the slowest today when it comes to technology and innovation,” Chung said. “We are here today to share HD Hyundai’s vision for changing the future course of humanity by changing the future of the construction industry, which we are calling Xite Transformation. This solution utilizes the latest technology to create a more sustainable future for humanity by solving pressing challenges such as safety, security, supply chain issues and climate change.”
Chung continued to present the company’s three main innovation goals: enhancing safety with digital technologies, delivering productivity with site autonomy, and decarbonizing and building an energy value chain. He also revealed the X-Wise and X-Wise Xite technology, a key towards the company’s Xite Transformation.
X-Wise is an artificial intelligence (AI) platform designed to maximize safety and efficiency in fleet management to reach the goal of site autonomy and will be applied to all HD Hyundai’s industrial solutions as a base technology going forward. X-Wise Xite is an intelligent site management solution developed for optimal production of infrastructure by connecting all construction equipment applied with X-Wise in real time.
HD Hyundai also said it plans to become a leader in open innovation by partnering with global top players in the industry to build a new global ecosystem.
Followed by Chung’s opening speech, partnering companies specified how they plan to collaborate with HD Hyundai to actualize Xite Transformation. Winta Bereket, the marketing manager at HD Hyundai Infracore North America, introduced HD Hyundai’s AI technology applied to construction
equipment that is designed to enhance safety and productivity and advance the realization of site autonomy.
Prof. Marco Hutter from Gravis Robotics shared how his research on quadrupedal robots grew into developing autonomous excavators and outlined the key features of robotic construction equipment. Vice president of Google Cloud, Philip Moyer, and Aerin Jungmin Lee from HD Hyundai, presented a roadmap that the two companies are mutually working on with generative AI.
CES 2024 is described as one of the largest tech events in the world.
