Hyundai Mobis Holds Youth Engineering Leader Festival to Nurture Future Mobility Talent

About 100 students from 12 high schools nationwide take part
Compete in deep learning- and ROS2-based autonomous driving challenges

Hyundai Mobis is working to nurture engineering talent who will lead the future mobility industry.

Hyundai Mobis said on November 9 that it held the 2026 Youth Engineering Leader Festival on November 7 at Hana Academy Seoul in Seoul to share the achievements of its Youth Engineering Leader curriculum, which is offered as a course approved by education authorities.

The Hyundai Mobis Youth Engineering Leaders Festival, held at Hana Academy Seoul on the 7th. Hyundai Mobis

About 100 students from 12 high schools nationwide took part in the event. They tested their engineering thinking, problem-solving skills, and teamwork in three categories: an engineering debate competition, an autonomous vehicle competition, and a young engineers' academic conference.

In the engineering debate competition, students who had completed Engineering Communication, a course under the high school credit system, discussed key issues in engineering and technology. They were evaluated on their reasoning and communication skills as they analyzed the logic of opposing arguments and presented their views from an engineering perspective.

In the autonomous vehicle competition, which has been held since 2018, students developed driving algorithms that recognize lane markings and traffic signals and avoid obstacles, then applied them to model cars. This year, the competition was divided into two categories: deep learning-based autonomous vehicles and ROS2 (Robot Operating System 2)-based physical AI vehicles.

Judges assessed driving stability based on a comprehensive evaluation of course departures, the number of collisions with obstacles, and completion times. In the results, Incheon Samsan High School won the deep learning-based autonomous vehicle category, while Incheon Songdo High School took first place in the ROS2-based category.

At the young engineers' academic conference, students presented research in a range of fields, including artificial intelligence (AI), autonomous driving, sensor technology, and optimization algorithms. This year, the topics expanded to include research analyzing future mobility from a humanities and social sciences perspective, in addition to AI and autonomous driving technologies.

In 2024, Hyundai Mobis became the first company in the industry to publish Engineering Communication, a textbook for a regular school subject, in line with the high school credit system. Last year, it introduced an additional curriculum, Exploring Artificial Intelligence and Autonomous Vehicles. The curriculum has now been adopted by 14 general high schools nationwide, and about 1,800 students are building foundational skills in future mobility fields such as autonomous driving and robotics.

"The Youth Engineering Leader program helps students build problem-solving skills based on the engineering knowledge they learn at school and expand those skills through independent research," said Han Seonghee, head of Hyundai Mobis' Sustainability Management Office. "We plan to continue expanding our support to nurture creative engineering talent who will lead the future mobility industry."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.