The government has taken another step closer to its goal of commercializing fully autonomous driving by 2027.

The government announced on the 26th that it has established and published two national standards (KS) to standardize the format of V2X data exchanged between autonomous vehicles (V2V) and between vehicles and infrastructure (V2I) and to enable their use in future demonstrations and infrastructure construction.

Standardizing and unifying the data format for autonomous driving enables the exchange of various information, such as vehicle location, speed, brakes, and traffic signal status, with vehicles from other manufacturers and road infrastructure. This allows for the realization of cooperative autonomous driving, which is a step ahead of vehicle-only autonomous driving, thereby significantly improving the performance and safety of autonomous driving.

The Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy (Korean Agency for Technology and Standards) and the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport collaborated to develop a standard proposal after more than two years of work starting in 2020, and also conducted close consultations with domestic demonstration municipalities such as Seoul and Sejong, as well as with the SAE (International Automotive Engineers Association) standard, which is effectively an international standard.

With Dr. Yoo Jae-joon of ETRI serving as the working group leader, a comprehensive group of over 30 organizations from industry, academia, and research, including the Korea Standards Association, the Korea Automobile Research Institute, the Intelligent Transportation Systems Association, the Korea Expressway Corporation, the Korea Road Traffic Authority, Hyundai Motor Company, and SKT, participated.

The national standards (KS) for autonomous vehicle data consist of a total of seven series, including the two announced this time, and are scheduled to be completed by the end of 2024.
Excluding Part 1, which is a reference scenario, the implementation dates for Parts 2 through 7 were set to January 1, 2025, to ensure there would be no setbacks in infrastructure construction.

Jin Jong-wook, Administrator of the Korean Agency for Technology and Standards, stated, “The entire world is focusing its strategies on fostering the cooperative autonomous driving industry. Korean Standards will contribute to the establishment of the most efficient infrastructure and the revitalization of the industry, and we will continue pan-governmental cooperation to this end.”