Hyundai CRADLE, Hyundai Motor Company’s open innovation center in the U.S. is investing in Netradyne, a U.S.-based technology company specializing in vehicle safety management solution.

Netradyne founded in 2015 has developed driving technology solutions by leveraging artificial intelligence and big data analytics. Its focus is to build a system to manage the overall autonomous driving with image recognition technology to monitor drivers and road conditions.

The latest agreement follows Hyundai Motor Group’s partnership with Aptiv to form a $4 billion autonomous driving joint venture to develop a production-ready autonomous driving platform.

With this agreement, Hyundai and Netradyne will collaborate to develop Level 3+ advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) and autonomous driving solutions.

Netradyne has already captured 3.5 million miles of paved roads in the U.S. through AI and professional drivers. The data includes numerous passes over the same roads to provide more insights for further development of autonomous vehicles, according to Hyundai Motor Group.

Netradyne’s technology will also support Hyundai’s development of Level 4+ self-driving cars that can drive without any human interaction. Hyundai Motor Group is also expected to develop a high precision map for self-driving vehicles.

Global market research firm IHS Markit forecasts that 33.7 million autonomous vehicles will be sold annually worldwide by 2040. Hyundai Motor Group is pursuing commercialization of Level 4 autonomous driving systems in limited areas such as state-designated smart cities by 2021.

Hyundai Motor Group already obtained a license to test run its autonomous driving vehicles on expressways in Nevada in December 2015. It also became the first to obtain a license to test autonomous driving in Korea in March 2016.

By Lee Jong-hyuk and Minu Kim

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