Test Drives of Self-Driving Vehicles to Be Allowed on All Roads across Nation

Seoul National University's Intelligent Automobile IT Research Center introduced the “SNUber 2,” which can be installed in any car like an operating system (OS) and can converted the car into a self-driving car at the 4th grade level, giving the Korean self-drive car industry big momentum. The 4th grade level means a completely autonomous driving that controls all operations of the vehicle from a departure to a destination without the driver's control.

The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport (MOLIT) extended trial driving sections for self-driving vehicles to all national roads on November 15. In order to promote autonomous vehicle research and development, it is possible to carry out various types of test operations in various traffic environments including the city center.

Accordingly, autonomous vehicle developers such as Seoul National University and Hanyang University, Hyundai Motor and Naver, will be able to test-drive autonomous vehicles freely if they receive provisional permission for the use of roads except for special zones for children, senior citizens and the disabled.

The MOLIT is also planning to complete an autonomous driving test city (K-City) by 2019. The city will have actual roads and city environments required for the autonomous driving on an ITS test road in the Driving Test Center of the Korea Automobile Safety Institute of the Transportation Safety Authority in Hwaseong City, Gyeonggi Province. At that time, the MOLIT decided to open some part that can be used even before the test city construction was completely finished.

In line with this, the Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning distributed new exclusive frequencies required for drives of future autonomous vehicles. The decision aimed to help self-driving cars communicate with base stations or other vehicles on the road, so that they can operate on their own.

In addition, it is suggested that Korean companies must localize core sensor components in order to avoid losing their export competitiveness in the autonomous car industry which is expected to begin to bloom in 2020. In order to maintain Korea’s position in the global automobile industry, which is its main export item, Korea must make efforts to localize core parts including light detection and ranging (LIDAR) sensors, industry watchers say.