Hyundai WIA Develops Korea’s First Fully Autonomous Forklift: “Deployment at Kia Autoland Hwaseong Scheduled for May Next Year”

[Financial News] Hyundai WIA will become the first company in South Korea to supply manufacturing sites with a forklift that can load and unload cargo autonomously, without human operators.
Hyundai WIA announced on the 7th that it had developed a fully autonomous forklift capable of loading and unloading cargo and would begin supplying it. Its first deployment site will be Kia Corporation’s Autoland Hwaseong, where it is scheduled to enter actual operation in May next year.
The key feature of the autonomous forklift is that it can navigate a factory independently, without human control, load goods onto pallets, and even load and unload cargo from trucks. Hyundai WIA applied its experience developing autonomous mobile robots (AMRs), which are already in mass production, to the forklift. Equipped with LiDAR sensors, vision sensors, and safety scanners, it can recognize and navigate the worksite on its own. It was also designed to find optimal routes using a digital twin, a virtual space that replicates the actual factory.
The company focused most heavily on loading and unloading accuracy. The forklift uses vision sensors to identify pallet positions while accounting for variables such as the truck body sinking under the load and changes in pallet position caused by ground conditions.
It also applies an iterative closest point (ICP) algorithm to correct sensor data in real time. As a result, the company explained that it achieved a 100% recognition rate even when a pallet was displaced by up to 250 mm from its target position or rotated by more than 10 degrees. The forklift can also automatically correct its posture on sloped sections of container access routes.
In terms of performance, it can carry up to 4 tons, comparable to the medium-sized forklifts commonly used at manufacturing sites. Its top speed is approximately 6.5 km/h, set in accordance with factory safety standards. Safety scanners mounted on all four sides immediately stop the forklift when they detect an obstacle, helping prevent accidents.
Starting with this autonomous forklift, Hyundai WIA plans to complete the lineup of its H-Motion mobile-robot brand by combining it with its already commercialized AMRs and parking robots. The company also plans to use the lineup to target global markets.
A Hyundai WIA official said, “The supply of autonomous forklifts will enable us to further diversify the lineup of industrial robots used at manufacturing sites.” The official added, “We will work harder to become a company that transforms global manufacturing sites through H-Motion, our industrial mobile-robot brand.”
[email protected] Kim Dong-chan Reporter