First local highway driving successful... Empty roads utilized for testing during weekends

"Will construct an autonomous vehicle the world will be impressed" by making the same appearance similar to a regular car

The office of Professor Yi Kyong-su (55)/ Professor, Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Seoul National University, resembles a car center. Four cars which he himself developed are parked in a garage full of machines such as a lift to lift a car, a tire detacher, and a compressor. Autonomous cars often come up with radar equipment that run on the ceiling of cars and are analyzed everywhere. However, the appearance of the autonomous cars parked there were almost similar to a regular car.

"I am aiming for mass production. I initially did not plan to develop it in a different way from a regular car." The radar hid inside the car and under the car, and the computer system nestled in the trunk."


Yi Kyong-su (55)/ Professor, Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Seoul National University, who develops autonomous driving technology, said, "I want to complete the best autonomous driving technology that needs no human supervision  by 2020." / Guest journalist.

Professor Yi 's autonomous navigation paper received a top paper award at the SAE International Conference held in Detroit, USA last month. It is the annual conference held by the American Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) and boasts the world's largest automotive industry and authority. More than 10,000 people from around the world, including automobile manufacturers and parts companies, and academia and related research institutes, will participate in the publication of more than 2,000 papers. Nonetheless,  autonomous vehicles are so called the future of the car and attracting attention. IT companies such as Google and Naver as well as existing global automakers are competing for development. We were delighted to know that  the technology we developed was recognized as world class. " The research team succeeded in driving the autonomous vehicle on a highway in Korea for the first time last year. The award paper was based on the results of this study. The autonomous vehicle was able to anticipate the surrounding vehicles as well as overcoming dangers without human supervision.

Yi, who has been involved in research on automotive technology for 30 years, began developing autonomous vehicles with HMC in 2007. "Just think of people driving the same way- a series of prediction and Judgment.”  A camera, radar and GPS  has replaced human eyes. The information collected by the computer is analyzed to predict and judge the future. It predicts the next 2 seconds every 0.1 second to make the best judgment and control the car.

Currently, there are 13 researchers in the project. Professor Yi mentioned that “it was difficult to find suitable roads to test the cars” and that he mainly “used roads in a developing  new city or a secluded neighboring city to test the cars.” They would travel to Incheon Songdo or Yeongjongdo every day or on weekends. "People are in the driver's seat and front passenger's seat, but you have to be careful about safety.”  He mentioned that there are no problem in the dark night. "The bad weather is the most frightening, because the sudden rain caused the road to get wet and the laser scanner could not sense the lane and the system would not work at all. When I was doing the self parking test in the parking lot, it was not possible to stop the backward car and the vehicle was damaged. After countless trials, I was able to drive on a highway (44km), and at the Seoul Motor Show in March, I ran a demonstration of driving 4km on public roads.

Professor Lee is now called the "Spring and Autumnal Warring States" in the world of autonomous driving technology development. "From Mercedes to Google, Tesla, Uber and all kinds of companies are competing against each other solely on their own skills and there is no definite technical standard." Where did native technology come from? "The US Road Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) is divided into five levels from level 0 to 4.

"We are on the verge of level 3, which is the level of human intervention in case of an emergency." "Level 5, a fully autonomous vehicle, which no technicians in the world has reached yet. I want to get to level 5 highway by 2020. "It was reported that a driver's inadequate driving and misjudgment caused more than 90% of all car accidents. It is the ultimate goal of all engineers to build safe cars without worrying about accidents.

Link to article: http://news.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2017/05/18/2017051800152.html