Hankook Tire received “Highly Commended” under the Tire Manufacture - Producer category at the Journey to Automation Awards (J2A Awards).

Organized by European Rubber Journal (ERJ), Journey to Automation Awards (J2A Awards) recognizes tire brands’ efforts on the topic of automation and digital transformation. In its inaugural ceremony, Hankook Tire was recognized for its Virtual Compound Design (VCD) system that predicts the characteristics of tire compounds and finds an optimal combination through artificial intelligence (AI) analysis.

Bonhee Ku, Senior Vice President and CTO of Hankook Tire, said, “We are honored to have been recognized for the challenge that we have been taking to change the future of mobility and create endless possibilities through digital transformation. We believe that our commitment to advance this new endeavor will not only transform how the tires will be produced in the future but set a new paradigm for the entire automotive industry.

Hankook's VCD system was developed as a project to lay the foundation for Artificial Intelligence-driven tire development. Hankook collected various data from its previous researches on AI tires and performed a series of analysis to see if it could be used as a “big data" and if AI could be applied.

The company collaborated with the prestigious Korea Advanced Institute of Science & Technology (KAIST) to advance the AI model the company created. The partnership led to an improvement in accuracy by applying new AI technology such as auto machine learning (Auto-ML) and auto encoder. Hankook plans to gradually integrate the AI system into its compound development process starting next year and complete the virtual compound design technology by 2023.

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Hankook recognized by European Rubber Journal's J2A Awards