At this year's all-digital Autodesk University event, the Design & Manufacturing Keynote centred on 'Elevate', a new vehicle concept from Hyundai, which is employing generative design technology to develop a new vehicle that has the ability to "walk" in challenging environments.
Debuted at last year's CES by the automotive manufacturer's New Horizons Studio in collaboration with industrial design studio Sundberg-Ferar, 'Elevate' is a four-legged vehicle which can alternate between driving and "walking" functions depending on the terrain or application, providing a mobility solution for various transport needs, exploration and emergency scenarios.
Here, Andy Harris (AH), Senior Principal Research Engineer at Autodesk Research, talks to TCT about how generative design is making this unique "Transformer" style vehicle possible.
TCT: At AU, Hyundai is presented the latest iteration of its “walking car”, designed using Autodesk tools - can you tell us how this collaboration emerged?
AH: After debuting the walking “Elevate” concept vehicle at CES 2019, John Suh – founding director of Hyundai's New Horizons Studio in Silicon Valley – began exploring how the vehicle could become a reality. It is a unique mobility solution with immensely difficult design and engineering challenges, but also very promising potential applications that are worth pursuing. One of the most common is the transportation industry’s quest to create components that are lighter, but stronger, than past generations of similar components.
Designers and engineers tasked with these “lightweighting” challenges frequently look to futuristic materials such as metallic foams, carbon fiber and new metal alloys – along with modern design techniques such as generative design – for solutions. These are areas where Autodesk’s tools and expertise excel, so Hyundai turned to Autodesk for input.
TCT: What were the main goals of the concept in terms of its design and functionality?
AH: The Hyundai Elevate Ultimate Vehicle (UMV) was inspired by the "transformative" characters in the "Transformer" series. The concept vehicle – developed using Autodesk’s generative design technology in Fusion 360 – explores the possibility of transforming from a four-wheeled vehicle into a four-legged, walking vehicle that offers flexibility to navigate irregular terrain and places where there are no roads, which is especially useful in emergency rescue situations, as well as when exploring on Earth (and potentially other planets).
In addition, Hyundai Elevate UMV was created to help people with disabilities get around more easily. Autodesk’s Generative design technology helped Hyundai uncover solutions for some of the most challenging components of the product concept, including strong, rigid and light designs, while ensuring outstanding compactness.
TCT: The vehicle has been described as the “ultimate mobility vehicle” - how challenging was it to incorporate that “Transformer” element into the vehicle design?
AH: The challenges of this category of vehicle span a number of different aspects of engineering, from how the vehicle is powered and the motors that drive it – so it gets where it’s intended to go – to how it’s controlled and that doing so is intuitive, thus increasing the vehicle’s safety and utility.
In many cases, one design requirement or element of the concept creates multiple significant engineering challenges to overcome. For instance, an electric vehicle (EV) that both drives and walks appears best executed by placing a powerful, high-torque electric motor at each wheel (for driving). But to walk safely and effectively requires the “legs” to be very strong, rigid and jointed, and the whole assembly (including the motor-containing “feet”) to be very light. That is not a simple set of engineering requirements to solve.
Hyundai 'Elevate' Walking Car Concept.
TCT: The automotive industry has undergone a lot of change with the advent of electronic and autonomous vehicle technologies - how are technologies like generative design helping to facilitate that change?
AH: According to the Harwell-based Faraday Institution, the UK will need to launch its first full-scale gigafactory for battery production to cope with the surge in EV demand over the next three years. The research institute is backed by the government to ensure a steady supply of batteries in the future.
However, simply producing more batteries isn’t enough to electrify transportation and eliminate emissions. Achieving these results will also require a redesign of the car’s components. An electric vehicle comes with a whole set of new challenges.
There are conflicting considerations: Mileage and battery weight; safety and lightweight, and customer experience and affordability. One tremendously valuable way of addressing these conflicts is to break from traditional workflows and include technology such as artificial intelligence (AI) that assists designers and engineers in their process of finding the best solutions.
Generative design offers vehicle manufacturers a new, but proven, tool to reduce weight, increase fuel economy and often improve performance by designing components using a variety of lightweight, recyclable materials, such as aluminium, magnesium, or PLA plastics. Generative design often enables manufacturers to consolidate assemblies into fewer parts by suggesting design solutions that are beyond what a team may have thought it had the time or resources to consider.
Advanced lightweighting approaches through generative design will be pivotal to improving power consumption and the range of electric vehicles, while different materials and compositions will improve the structure of electric cars. A circular approach (a closed-up system that doesn’t generate waste), has huge potential in an industry like automotive, where manufacturers have the power to impact the entire design and manufacturing approach, creating a workflow that favours recycling and closed-loop manufacturing.
TCT: As we’ve seen from previous Autodesk collaborations with the likes of Volkswagen and BAC, generative design can open up very some unique design possibilities - how open minded has Hyundai been in exploring those ideas which would have previously been considered unconventional for the automotive industry?
AH: Something the team at Autodesk has come to deeply appreciate, because it truly expands what’s possible, is Dr. Suh’s team at Hyundai’s New Horizons Studios being both very visionary and experimental, as well as very pragmatic. This entire project is unconventional, so from the start it requires people to think beyond “what is” to instead think in terms of “what if?”. That said, the follow-on question after the “what if?” has consistently been “how will we?” and exploring how to make the vision a practical, affordable, conventionally-manufactured reality.
TCT: We know generative design complements technologies like additive manufacturing - can you talk to us about the manufacturing processes being employed by Hyundai?
AH: Generative design also guides us in determining how the necessary parts should be manufactured. Many examples have showcase applications of generative designs that are best produced by 3D printing the parts. We did look at this for prototyping with Hyundai. In order to align the output within the company's existing manufacturing methods, we changed the generative design algorithms to only explore options that would fit into Hyundai’s existing methods.
As we went through iterations of the possible outcomes, Hyundai had a clear view of how the designs fit with the more conventional manufacturing machines and processes that exist within its supply chain, and thus was able to ensure the final suggested output could be made using those methods.
TCT: For future facing vehicle concepts like this, do you think it’s important for manufacturers to start incorporating new and exciting technologies from the off-set, like generative or AM for example, in order to help facilitate a wider shift towards adopting these more ‘non traditional’ manufacturing designs and techniques more regularly?
AH: Generative design is a powerful tool, particularly within the conceptual design stage. It helps you understand all the design possibilities with regards to materials and manufacturing constraints. Incorporating this early on in the design phase helps to speed up the design process. It also gives designers and engineers the confidence they have considered a wide range of potential designs before down-selecting based on performance, mass and cost.
It can also highlight opportunities and allow designers to explore new materials or manufacturing methods to understand the impact of those such as AM – a very important consideration in the design phase – that we often don’t have as much time to explore. In this vehicle, we were able to use generative design to draw comparisons between different materials and manufacturing methods and settled on additive manufacturing with a range of different materials to suit the performance, mass and cost of the vehicle.
TCT: Where is the project up to now? What’s next for Autodesk’s involvement?
AH: The work continues, both on this vehicle and other, related projects that we will be talking about soon. The engineering challenges we’re facing with this category of vehicle are not insignificant, but we’re very excited about where confronting them is taking us. Hyundai and Autodesk have an excellent, collaborative working relationship that’s mutually beneficial and informative – in working together closely, we’re learning from one-another, testing assumptions, pushing boundaries, then using the lessons we’re learning together to improve what each of us offer our respective customers.
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