Yandex plus Hyundai Sonata VIII the same budget robocar

12 July 2019

A prototype drone based on the latest Sonata sedan

The recent Alliance of IT companies Yandex and division of Hyundai Mobis (the supplier of various automotive components, including autopilots) aims to create advanced drones of the 4th and 5th graders autonomy. Today, July 12 companions showed to the public its first prototype, based on the Sonata sedan VIII. Interestingly, the new Hyundai Sonata sedan will arrive on the Russian market in the second half of this year.
Now drones Yandex tested on the streets of the capital, in addition, as robotaxi operated in unmanned areas in SKOLKOVO and Innopolis. By the way, the same tests Yandex staged in Israel (in June, the Russian company has opened an office in tel Aviv).
Interestingly, the base car for retrofitting offline Yandex received only in may, but was able to quickly overcome in a very short time. The sedan is already being tested in a closed area, and later will be released on the streets of Moscow.
According to the head of unmanned vehicles of Yandex, Dmitry Polishchuk they actively helped by experts of subsidiary company Hyundai Mobis. Hence the sedan and its modern platform originally designed for sequential upgrades of autonomy. So that the project partners mainly needed to combine "hard" from Hyundai Mobis with a software from Yandex.

Accordingly, the complex of radars and cameras of the drone is a separate unit mounted on the roof 

This solution in theory should allow to adapt the unit to different models.
In the future, the cooperation with Yandex Hyundai should result in a ready hardware and software "box" system that allows you to retrofit any vehicle (or electric vehicle or hybrid) in a stand. The calculation is based on the use of the product not only partners, but any third-party companies, for example, to create robotaxi for networks of car sharing. So, Yahoo is already testing a fleet of 50 UAVs on the basis of Toyota Prius. By the end of this year, it expects to increase it to more than a hundred, including the Hyundai Sonata. However, drones can be created on the basis of other models of the brands Hyundai and KIA.

PS Box approach to creating a drone – a clear antithesis to the "dear to yourself" drones Tesla. View which business models will be more viable and profitable.