Hyundai’s Archery Robots, 3D-Printed Grips Help South Korea at Olympics

South Korea’s archery team made a clean sweep at the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris, grabbing gold in all five men’s and women’s competition categories. Ending with seven medals in total, the team’s closest competitor was France, which managed only one silver and one bronze medal. Hyundai Motor Company has sponsored the South Korean national archery team since 1985, and says it aims to advance and popularise the sport in its home country. Now, the company has shared details of how it developed advanced robots and used its engineering resources to help the team at the Olympics.

Hyundai is for the first time showing off a self-adjusting archery robot, which can shoot arrows so accurately that exact shots can be repeated as many times as needed to help archers train. Its launch angle and intensity can be adjusted, and it can also detect defective arrows. 

A multi-camera posture analysis system allows athletes and coaches to analyse footage of their performance from unusual angles including top and front, which can help with training and posture correction.

The company has also developed 3D-printed bow grips that can be customised to each archer’s unique hand shape with extremely fine tolerance to “unify the bow and the archer’s hand”. According to Hyundai, the South Korean national archery team uses these grips in competition to maximise performance and precision.  

Also see: Remote-Controlled Cars Steal The Show At The 2024 Paris Olympics

A camera-based heart rate sensor developed by Hyundai has also been deployed to help with training. This uses incredibly subtle changes in the skin colour on an athlete’s face to measure blood circulation, and it works from a distance of over 10m, leaving archers free to move around without anything in the way and breaking their focus. Measurements can be displayed in real time, potentially giving audiences at sporting events more context into an athlete’s performance. 

Visitors to the Hyundai Motorstudio mobility theme park in Goyang, South Korea, will be able to experience some of Hyundai’s archery engineering efforts until August 18. Starting with an immersive shooting experience, aspiring archers can stand in front of a 19m wide, 3.5m tall anamorphic screen simulating an archery range, and will be taken through the stages of learning to shoot arrows and competing at elite global-scale sporting events.