To ensure that autonomous vehicles can be introduced more actively and operated safely across the country, a map evaluating the difficulty of autonomous driving on major road networks across the country will be created this year.

The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport (Minister Park Sang-woo) recently announced that as the number of vehicles that have obtained temporary operation permits for autonomous driving technology verification has exceeded 440 and autonomous vehicles are expected to expand in the future as transactions between companies for Level 4 autonomous vehicles will be possible through a performance certification system starting in March next year, the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport plans to build an autonomous driving map for major road networks nationwide and utilize it to establish autonomous driving-related policies.

The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport completed an evaluation of national highway sections last year and is currently conducting an evaluation of local roads this year. Korea Expressway Corporation also announced on July 5 an evaluation service for expressways (excluding private sector sections), and plans to establish an autonomous driving map covering major road networks such as expressways, national roads, and local roads within this year.

The autonomous driving map categorizes similar road sections based on key elements related to autonomous driving technology implementation, such as road geometry, traffic flow, presence of tunnels and bridges, and intersection types, and evaluates the degree to which autonomous driving is stably implemented through simulation and actual driving on representative sections of each type.

In particular, in the simulation driving phase, various driving scenarios are set, including not only general driving conditions but also special situations such as night, fog, wet road conditions, and forward accidents, to check whether the autonomous driving function is disabled in the relevant section or whether autonomous driving safety is reduced due to failure to recognize signals or abnormal driving.

The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport expects that the autonomous driving map being built this time will serve as the foundation for a groundbreaking change in autonomous driving policy in the future.

If the existing policy was a positive approach that allowed autonomous vehicle operation in limited areas such as pilot operation zones, we plan to consider switching to a negative approach by gradually expanding the sections where autonomous vehicle operation is allowed, taking into account the difficulty of autonomous driving on each road.

In addition, we plan to utilize autonomous driving maps to build infrastructure for autonomous cooperative driving (C-ITS).

In sections where autonomous driving difficulty is high, the need for autonomous cooperative driving utilizing C-ITS infrastructure is high, so the related infrastructure will be built first using direct communication (V2X), and in sections where autonomous driving difficulty is low, a communication method utilizing mobile communication networks (V2N) will be applied to improve the efficiency of infrastructure construction.

Park Jin-ho, director of the Autonomous Driving Policy Division at the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport, said, “Autonomous driving technology is developing, with the first unmanned autonomous vehicle recently being issued a temporary operating permit, but autonomous driving technology is not always feasible depending on road conditions. “Since the level of difficulty in realizing the technology varies, it is necessary to set the operating areas of autonomous vehicles in detail,” he said. “This time, objective data on road conditions related to the implementation of autonomous driving technology is expected to be prepared, so we will utilize this to verify the safety of autonomous vehicles and prepare to spread them, and also to bring forward the commercialization of autonomous driving.”