By Seo Jeong Yun WIRED Korea

Kakao Mobility is launching a pilot project to operate a self-driving vehicle for on-the-road testing in mid-March, an initial preparation for using autonomous cars for its taxi-hailing service.

A subsidiary of an internet service provider Kakao, Kakao Mobility has recently obtained a permit from the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport to operate a self-driving vehicle during the next five years from March 4.

A company official says it is time for Kakao Mobility to bring its self-driving technology out of the lab and test it on the road, which he says will benefit 24 million customers using its taxi-hailing service.
 

Many other Korean companies are also working on technologies for self-driving cars. Among them are KT, SK Telecom and LG Uplus, all of them being mobile operators, which are also developing technologies for connectivity for use on their 5G mobile networks.

For its part, Samsung Electronics is collaborating with its U.S. subsidiary Harman on automotive cybersecurity, advanced driver assistance, advanced display, digital cockpit and other technologies. It is also producing processors, image sensors and other computer chips that are needed for self-driving cars

Hyundai Motor Co. is also working on autonomous driving technology. But it goes beyond this technology as it is developing a flying car taxi in collaboration with Uber.

Kakao Mobility, a company that provides a tax-hailing service on its app, says it will test a self-driving vehicle with Level 4 automation, or the second highest level after Level 5 that does not require any human intervention as in the case involving a robotic taxi.

At Level 4, the driver may go to sleep or leave the seat conventionally set for himself, with the level of automation not requiring any driver attention for safety.

Technologies to be tested in the pilot project include the perception and cognition of the traffic environment, such as roads, vehicles, pedestrians and traffic lights; decision-making capability with regard to keeping the lane, changing lanes and pulling over on the shoulder of a road; and vehicle control ranging from steering to acceleration and deceleration.

Given its taxi-hailing service on an app, it is only natural that Kakao Mobility is working on an artificial intelligence-based algorithm for effectively matching passengers and taxies, a navigational technology providing information on optimal routes for transport and an advanced location-determining technology.

Kakao Mobility says it will launch a pilot customer service in a designated area by year-end.

Using the self-driving technology of its own development and the mobility technology it has gained from its taxi-hailing service, a company official says that Kakao Mobility will speed up the commercialization of Level 4 service for its customers.

“We will collaborate with self-driving technology startups, automakers, hardware makers and others (for our new service),” says You Seoungil, head of Kakao Mobility Intelligence Lab.

The original Korean-language article is found at 카카오모빌리티, '자율주행차' 시범서비스 나선다.