Homegrown driverless car to get first trial run

A homegrown autonomous driving vehicle will begin its first trial run next week, the Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute said Wednesday.

AutoVe is a level 4 self-driving vehicle that does not have a driver’s seat. With no human assistance, the six-seater car is driven solely by the research institute’s artificial intelligence system, coupled with a self-developed voice recognition system.

Passengers can just talk to the car to set up the destination, it said.

The government-funded research institute said it plans to have AutoVe tour a park in their facility 10 times a day starting next week. AutoVe will drive under a 25-kilometer speed limit and strictly comply with safety regulations within the research institute’s property, it said.

The AI system-based autonomous vehicle works by processing the information obtained from the camera and light detection and ranging sensor to identify the surrounding traffic environment.

The research institute has also built a system that can collect traffic environment data through multiple sensors installed throughout the park. The vehicles that receive the data will then be able to use it to identify blind spots.

For the upcoming test run, the firm had to build a 200-terabyte traffic database to train the AI system that the autonomous vehicle runs on.

It plans to expand the area of the test run in the future, with an aim of commercializing the vehicle by 2027.

By Shim Woo-hyun (ws@heraldcorp.com)