Hyundai Mobis wire harness automated assembly pilot
Hyundai’s parts affiliate Hyundai Mobis is working on the functional integrity of its vehicle wire harnesses as well as automating their attachment to the vehicle battery
Hyundai Mobis is advancing efforts to ensure that the wire harnesses controlling its ever-more sophisticated vehicles are fully functional before the vehicle prototype is built. At the same time, when it comes to production it is now looking to automate the process of attaching those harnesses to the vehicle battery – a manufacturing step that has only ever been carried out manually. It is all to do with a wider strategic push at Hyundai Motor Group toward intelligent, high‑precision, fully automated production.
Hyundai Mobis is a subsidiary of the wider Hyundai Motor Group focused on autonomous driving, connectivity and electrification. It develops and manufactures chassis, cockpit and front-end modules that include advanced driver-assistance systems, infotainment, electrification, semiconductors and software. Foundational to those systems is the integrity of the wire harnesses connecting the various modules. The wire harness connects all electrical and electronic components in the vehicle necessary to run the car. That includes basics such as steering and braking as well as secondary car functions, such as ventilation and infotainment. Automating the installation of the wire harness is now a target for Hyundai to improve the production process.
Plugging in the power
Hyundai Mobis is currently carrying out pilot tests at its Ulsan Electrification plant in South Korea to automate the manufacturing process of connecting vehicle wire harnesses to battery modules using robots. The tier one supplier is aiming to accelerate the productivity of smart battery production lines.
“Connecting the harness to the battery is challenging even for skilled operators because of limited working space and the difficulty of handling cables,” explains a spokesperson for Hyundai Mobis. The company says it is pursuing automation for the process not only to improve workability and quality consistency, but also as part of its effort to realise a more intelligent manufacturing environment.
Connecting wire harnesses to battery modules is considered one of the most difficult tasks to automate and a high level of technology is required for a robot to recognise the connector's position and angle in real time, and fasten it accurately.
According to Hyundai Mobis, the process is difficult to automate because the connector is not presented in a fixed position or orientation, and has a high degree of freedom. This requires the robot system to accurately recognise its position (X, Y, Z) and orientation (RX, RY, RZ) using only a 3D vision sensor.
“Hyundai Mobis is developing technologies that enable precise recognition of connector positions and orientations through a 3D vision system, while compensating for variations that may occur in actual manufacturing environments,” says a spokesperson for Hyundai Mobis.
“In addition, the mating socket may also vary in position because of manufacturing tolerances, requiring an extremely high level of assembly precision,” adds the spokesperson. “In some cases, even a 0.1 mm deviation can make assembly difficult.”
The gripper must also be capable of precisely controlling the position of the connector, while avoiding interference throughout the assembly path.
Hyundai Mobis’ technology recognises the connector's six-dimensional position data, including its location (on the X, Y, Z axis) and posture (RX, RY, RZ), using the 3D vision sensor. The robot then grips the connector and assembles it into the designated connection point on the battery module. The robot receives positional data from the 3D vision system and precisely grips the connector to carry out the assembly.
Six-axis robots
Working with an undisclosed engineering partner, Hyundai Mobis is developing a system that combines the 3D vision system and control technology with existing 6-axis industrial robots. The robots were selected because they provide the level of precision and repeatability required for connector assembly applications.
Those robots must carry out a number of tasks, such as terminal crimping, wire insertion, and wiring arrangement. Hyundai Mobis says the scope of robot application could expand to the wire harness manufacturing process in the future.
So far Hyundai Mobis has optimised position recognition and posture correction technology and has a control system suited to its production line. Accuracy and error rate verification for the fastening process is expected to follow in the second half of this year.
“The pilot programme includes verification of assembly accuracy and defect rates,” says the spokesperson. “In addition to assessing successful assembly performance, Hyundai Mobis is also evaluating the system's ability to detect incomplete or unsuccessful assembly attempts.”
Through the pilot project, Hyundai Mobis has confirmed the feasibility of automating a highly complex assembly process and the pilot programme is already being conducted in a mass-production environment. Following further validation and stabilisation, Hyundai Mobis plans to gradually expand the application of the technology.
Nova Lab
Vehicle wiring systems are becoming more complex as vehicle software becomes more sophisticated. Hyundai maintains that hundreds of controllers and thousands of signals and complex electronic functions need validation before they can be approved for assembly. To do that Hyundai and its sister company Kia has set up what they call the Nova Lab, where engineers use full-scale wire-car test benches to identify potential issues across a vehicle's electrical architecture before a vehicle body is even built.
Nova stands for Next-generation Open Validation and Automation, and the lab is based at the Namyang Research and Development Center in Korea.
According to Hyundai, a typical vehicle contains hundreds of controllers responsible for propulsion, infotainment, connectivity, safety and advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS). Independently, controllers can function correctly but problems can occur when these systems begin communicating and operating together. One instance of software conflict can impact multiple vehicle functions and may not become apparent until late-stage development, according to the company.
Engineers at Nova Lab validate the complete electrical architecture of a vehicle before a physical prototype is assembled. That can help identify between 350 to 400 potential issues during development, says Hyundai.
The validation involves hundreds of controllers, wiring harnesses and electronic components, which are physically connected exactly as they would be inside a production vehicle. The result is a complete electrical and electronic system without the vehicle itself.
“Wire-car validation was introduced as vehicle software and electronics grew increasingly complex,” says the carmaker. “Traditional testing focused on individual controllers and subsystems, but engineers needed a way to evaluate how entire vehicle systems performed together before prototype assembly.”
The Nova Lab evaluates four key areas: electrical circuit integrity, communication between vehicle controllers, functional performance and diagnostic system response.
Hyundai says that early development testing frequently uncovers communication failures, logic conflicts, abnormal power consumption and other system-level issues that may be difficult to identify through component-level testing alone. Resolving those issues before prototype construction helps improve software maturity and development efficiency.
"Software-defined vehicles are designed to continuously deliver greater convenience to customers through technologies such as over-the-air updates,” says Sang Yeon Kim, senior research engineer of the Pilot Electronic Control Development Team. “Our goal at Nova Lab is to improve software quality early in development so customers experience only the benefits of an evolving vehicle, not the disruptions that can result from quality-related issues."
