To this end, the company will increase its R&D investment cost from the current level of 7% of its parts sales to 10% by 2021. It will also invest 50% of it in ICT, which is closely related to autonomous driving, expanding related R&D workforce and infrastructure and actively promoting technical partnerships with global companies.

"We are aggressively investing in autonomous driving technologies. We will also increase our R&D workforce for autonomous driving from the current level of 600 to over 1,000 by 2021 and increase the number of M.Billy, our global autonomous test vehicles, from 3 to 20 by next year," forecasted Yang Seung-wook, Executive VP of ICT R&D Center at Hyundai Mobis.

German companies with which Hyundai Mobis signed a partnership to develop radars include SMS and ASTYX. Both are radar developers possessing the best design capabilities; the former jointly developed radars with TRW and Continental, and the latter with BMW and Autoliv.

Working with SMS and ASTYX, Hyundai Mobis will develop five radars for autonomous cars, which can allow cars to detect 360° around them by the end of this year and begin full-fledged production by 2021. The company will cooperate with SMS for entry-level front and side radars and with ASTYX for high-performance front radars. It will also complete a joint R&D project with Seoul National University for improving the target distinguishment of radars.

To ensure the performance and quality of sensors, Hyundai Mobis laid a dedicated test track for sensor testing in Seosan Proving Ground and commenced tests from last June. The company will also test ADAS equipped with their proprietary sensors and apply the sensors to M.Billy, its autonomous driving test car, which will run on actual roads to help improve performance and safety.

Hyundai Mobis deems its radars under development to have excellent target distinguishment capabilities with a resolution higher than its global competitors' and greater cost competitiveness by integrating two chips into one.

"We will complete the development of entry-level radars and high-performance radars within this year and commence production from the second half of next year," stated Gregory Baratoff, Vice President of Autonomous Driving Technologies at Hyundai Mobis. "We are opening ourselves up to collaboration with global companies possessing innovative technologies in various ways including technical partnerships and M&A to develop cameras and lidars." He also added, "We aim to secure technological power to help us capture the market based on our proprietary sensors and win contracts with global automakers for supplying sensors and systems for autonomous driving."

The three core technologies of autonomous driving are perception, decision and control. This means that a car autonomously perceives internal and external situations and makes a decision and controls its braking and steering. Hyundai Mobis has already attained global-caliber competitiveness in decision and control. It already commenced production of level 2 expressway autonomous driving and announced that it aimed to secure level 3 technology by 2020 and begin production by 2022.

The reason why the company is focusing on developing sensors is that it can implement optimal performance for autonomous driving only by securing all of the three technologies (perception, decision and control), thus enabling a bonafide competitive edge in the global market. This is also because the sensor market is forecasted to accelerate rapidly; the share of sensors in the ADAS (level 2 autonomous driving) market is expected to reach 60% by 2021.

To enable a quantum jump for sensors, Hyundai Mobis plans to actively utilize new technologies such as AI and deep learning.

"Developing sensors that can convert external driving circumstances into digital signals and read them accurately is an important challenge for the autonomous industry that is now readying itself for the era of autonomous driving," remarked Hwang Jae-ho, Director of ADAS at Hyundai Mobis. "With the recent development of innovative technologies that could alter the competitive atmosphere of the sensor market, such as advanced identification technologies using deep learning, we will actively utilize them in such a way to realize a quantum jump of our sensor technology."