Korea's first demonstration of autonomous vehicle-road linkage technology on the Yeoju test road

'Cooperative autonomous driving' technology, in which self-driving cars communicate with road infrastructure or other vehicles to overcome dangerous situations on their own, is being unveiled for the first time in Korea.

The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport is holding an international event to demonstrate seven types of autonomous cooperative driving technologies at the Yeoju Test Road on the Jungbu Inland Expressway.

This demonstration will be attended not only by domestic researchers and industry representatives but also by government and industry officials from major developed countries, including the U.S. Department of Transportation and the European Road Transport Telematics Organization (ERTICO, the European research and supervisory body for intelligent transport systems).

Conventional autonomous driving perceived surrounding conditions based on sensors such as cameras, radar, and lidar, but it had limitations in perceiving situations arising from weather, long distances, or blind spots.

To overcome the limitations of such sensors, the core of cooperative autonomous driving technology is to receive information from road infrastructure (V2I) or other vehicles (V2V) and autonomously change direction and decelerate without human intervention.

In this demonstration, we plan to show the technology of an autonomous vehicle changing lanes (avoiding) or decelerating by assuming seven situations that are difficult for the sensor to recognize while driving at a maximum speed of 80 km/h.

Situations requiring a lane change (avoidance) are: ① when there is a work zone ahead, ② when a vehicle two ahead with unseen taillights makes a sudden stop, or ③ when a broken-down vehicle (obstacle) is stopped ahead.

Situations requiring deceleration include ① when another vehicle enters from the right blind spot, ② when the road ahead is icy, and ③ when the driving lane narrows (the following vehicle(Route change), ④ Cases where another vehicle suddenly cuts in.

These technologies are the interim results of the "Smart Autonomous Cooperative Driving Road System Development Research" being promoted by the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport. Although this demonstration is being conducted on the closed Yeoju Test Road, the plan is to enable autonomous cooperative driving on general roads by 2020 when the research is completed.

If autonomous cooperative driving technology advances further in the future, future roads are expected to transform from a 'road network' serving as a mere transportation space into a 'digital network' serving as a service space, thereby realizing a 'hyper-connected society' where all vehicles, infrastructure, and people are interconnected.

Through this, traffic flow will be optimized to create roads free from traffic accidents and congestion, and a demand-driven transportation system is also expected to be introduced, allowing anyone to call and use a vehicle whenever needed.

Minister of Land, Infrastructure and Transport Kim Hyun-mee stated, “The core of the Fourth Industrial Revolution is the convergence and integration of industries and technologies, and cooperative autonomous driving technology is a prime example of this,” adding, “We expect that infrastructure will complement the limitations of sensors installed in vehicles, thereby significantly improving the efficiency and safety of autonomous driving.”