Hankook & Company Group, holding a subsidiary group Hankook Tire, co-hosted ‘The 1st Hankook & Company Group – KAIST AI Competition’ with the Korea Advanced Institute of Science Technology Graduate School of Data Science (KAIST GSDS) to reinforce employee capabilities in areas such as AI and Big Data analysis, model development, and utilization.
At the Competition, employees of Hankook & Company Group together with the graduate students of KAIST GSDS addressed the challenges of AI and Big Data technologies faced at industrial sites using AI algorithms, with the sponsorship of the global cloud pioneer Amazon Web Services(AWS) and a cloud management platform company MEGAZONECLOUD.
Among the 40 teams that applied for the competition, 20 teams advanced to the finals. For approximately five weeks, the teams identified the challenges faced at the industrial sites and deduced new solutions utilizing the analytical infrastructure provided by AWS and MEGAZONECLOUD. Throughout the competition, faculty members of KAIST GSDS played an integral role in offering advice regularly to further reinforce the capabilities of the participants.
The competition culminated on the 8th, with a final evaluation and awards ceremony at the Hankook Technodome, a high-tech research center in Yuseong-gu, Daejeon Metropolitan City. At the final evaluation stage, the generative AI service ‘GPT’ drew attention involving as a judging panel together with the employees of Hankook & Company Group and the faculty of KAIST GSDS. The GPT and fellow panel judges evaluated the overall fields of the submitted outcomes such as technicality and business impact.
As a result, the grand prize was awarded to the team of ‘Jong-Hoon Seo, Yong-Hoon Kim, and Seong-Bin Ahn’ who carried out a project under the theme of ‘Development of a tire noise prediction tool using pattern images and structural factors.’ The project was commended for deriving outstanding insights valuable enough to contribute to the field for immediate prediction of each tire noise performance. As a reward, the team is given a chance to attend the global AI technology seminars sponsored by AWS and MEGAZONECLOUD.
"Through the AI competition, we were able to further accelerate the speed of company-wide digital innovation by advancing the ability of executives and employees of our company in utilizing AI and Big data, which is the foundation for securing future growth engines,” said Seong-jin Kim, the Chief Digital Officer (CDO) and Chief Information Officer (CIO) of Hankook & Company, the operating holding company of Hankook & Company Group. “At the same time, we take pride in offering graduate students the chance to gain such valuable practical experience” he added.
Meanwhile, Hankook & Company Group is accelerating digital transformation through consistent strategic partnerships with companies and organizations in the AI and big data domains, including KAIST and AWS. In May, the company signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with KAIST to establish the ‘Third phase of the Digital Future Innovation Center' aimed to actively cooperate in fostering digital talent and jointly developing related technologies. Moreover, Hankook & Company Group with KAIST over the past four years, has undertaken a comprehensive portfolio of 22 digital research projects, yielding notable outcomes, such as optimizing R&D efficiency and productivity, and internalizing core technological capabilities.
Furthermore, Hankook & Company Group is currently engaged in a project in partnership with AWS and MEGAZONECLOUD, aimed at constructing a unified AI data platform. This initiative is committed to establishing an ecosystem in which Hankook Tire’s R&D, manufacturing, and external data can be comprehensively analyzed, thereby bolstering the competitiveness of future mobility products, including electric vehicles and smart tires.