Hyundai Mobis teams up with Israel’s Ottopia for autonomous driving solution

South Korean auto parts maker Hyundai Mobis said Wednesday it has teamed up with Israeli teleoperations startup Ottopia to develop remote mobility assistance solutions for autonomous vehicles.

The RMA solution is a technology that allows mobility companies to remotely control the movements and routes of uncrewed vehicles. The technology is especially effective in responding to emergency situations in real time both for industrial and commercial vehicles.

The company said it is developing the technology as part of preemptive efforts to cater to Level 4 autonomous driving technology, which refers to the level of automation where a car’s system can judge a situation on its own and make decisions accordingly.

Under the partnership, the Korean company will provide the hardware and software platforms, as well as system integration, while Ottopia will be responsible for developing software technologies for remote control.

The new solution will be based on high-performance electronic control units and 5G multimodem technologies. Ottopia’s patented teleoperation software is expected to drastically reduce costs for research and development work, Hyundai Mobis said.

The core of Ottopi’s technology is at providing low-latency and high-bandwidth link between vehicles and remote centers.

Hyundai Mobis said it hopes that the development of RMA technologies will grow its customer range to include robotaxi and roboshuttle service providers, as well as logistics, construction, farm machinery manufacturing and small mobility businesses.

The company intends to work with Ottopia to launch marketing campaigns in 2023 to promote the new solution.

“Hyundai Mobis Remote Mobility Assistance is an innovation platform for autonomous vehicles where OEMs (original equipment manufacturers) and mobility service providers will be able to innovate and bring new services to their end customers unleashing enormous potential for new business models. Through our partnership with Ottopia, we bring teleoperation as first of many services to be deployed on RMA,” said Abdul Khaliq, head of future mobility transformation software at Hyundai Mobis.

"(The technology) really is a game-changer for autonomy and we’re very excited to work with Hyundai Mobis in bringing it to life,” said Ottopia founder and CEO Amit Rosenzweig.

Meanwhile, Hyundai Mobis’ sister company Hyundai Motor invested an unspecified amount into Ottopia in 2021. Industry sources estimate the size of the investment to be over 1 billion won ($777,000).