Hyundai TIGER Concept Vehicle Can Roll Or Walk On Challenging Terrain

It may have lost favor with Apple but Hyundai naturally has its hands in other futuristic endeavors related to mobility. From its upcoming electric vehicles to robots that move individuals or groups, the South Korean carmaker is applying any and all aspects of design, engineering, and creative thinking to envision the vehicles of the future. Its latest concept is just as out of this world and could probably even be used out of this planet in the future.

We've seen automobile manufacturers and robotics experts try to find solutions to driving over extremely challenging or uneven terrain. Most of these involve either cars with wheels can adapt to such surfaces or robots that can walk over challenges. Often, however, they are mutually exclusive but Hyundai's Ultimate Mobility Vehicle or UMV concept asks, why not have both?

TIGER, short for "transforming intelligent ground excursion robot", indeed has that. Its base and most efficient mode has it rolling like an all-wheel-drive over most terrain. When that terrain becomes difficult or impossible to drive on, however, it extends its legs and simply walks or wobbles over the obstacles.

If this sounds a lot like Hyundai's Elevate concept in 2019, it's because they share a common DNA. But while Elevate is designed to be large enough to carry people, TIGER is meant to carry payload to be delivered in places where conventional vehicles can't reach, controlled remotely from afar. It is even designed to attach to unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), a.k.a. drones, to charge and deploy a TIGER near locations where a drone can't fly over.

Hyundai's TIGER is, of course, just a concept for now and just the latest that the company's New Horizons Group has brought to life. It will probably take a lot of time, research, and not to mention testing before such vehicles even become usable for actual deployment.