Groundbreaking Ceremony for Saemangeum Commercial Vehicle Autonomous Driving Testbed Construction Project

Published 05 Nov.2021 16:20(KST)

Leading the Future Car Demonstration Stage... Expectation for New Industry Creation

Groundbreaking Ceremony for Saemangeum Commercial Vehicle Autonomous Driving Testbed Construction Project

[Jeonju=Asia Economy Honam Reporting Headquarters, Reporter Kim Han-ho] Jeonbuk Province announced on the 5th that it held a groundbreaking ceremony for the ‘Autonomous Driving Testbed Construction Project’ prepared to promote the early commercialization of autonomous driving technology for commercial vehicles and to lead the technology.

The groundbreaking ceremony was attended by about 60 officials, including Song Ha-jin, Governor of Jeollabuk-do, Kang Im-jun, Mayor of Gunsan, and Park Jae-young, Director of Manufacturing Industry Policy at the Ministry of Industry, at the lower road of the Saemangeum Seawall (testbed construction site), celebrating the official start of the ‘Autonomous Driving Testbed.’

According to the province, the ‘Autonomous Driving Testbed Construction Project’ aims to create a test environment for autonomous platooning of commercial vehicles at autonomous driving level 3 by utilizing the lower waterfront road of the Saemangeum No. 4 Seawall and the scenic site, and to prepare an environment that can demonstrate levels 4 to 5 according to technological progress.

Accordingly, Jeonbuk Province plans to invest a total project cost of 20 billion KRW with a goal of completion in 2022 to build a demonstration road of 21 km, the longest in Korea, capable of testing and evaluating high-speed autonomous platooning at 80 km/h.

The autonomous driving road section will be created on the lower road of the Saemangeum Seawall No. 4 (approximately 10 km straight road) and the adjacent scenic site (1.5 km curved road) to maximize the utilization value of the Saemangeum Seawall, and a hybrid V2X communication-based C-ITS communication infrastructure will be established on each driving lane to support companies’ high-speed autonomous platooning demonstrations.

In addition, three types of equipment capable of evaluating the real-driving perception and control performance of core parts and systems for autonomous commercial vehicles and verifying high-speed driving stability are also being built, which will be linked and utilized with the autonomous driving testbed.

Jeonbuk Province expects this project, which has been carefully prepared since 2017 to secure an early market lead for autonomous commercial vehicles, to serve as a catalyst for creating a large-scale demonstration complex for autonomous driving research, demonstration, commercialization, and the concentration of related companies.

The province plans to establish continuity in the support system by building the ‘Commercial Vehicle Autonomous Platooning Testbed (2020?2022)’ for high-speed performance verification, considering that it laid the foundation by constructing the ‘Saemangeum Driving Test Site (2015?2018)’ for function verification at low speeds to create a large-scale demonstration complex for autonomous driving technology verification.

Based on this, the plan is to build a support system that links laboratory-level evaluation of autonomous platooning parts and systems for commercial vehicles to real-road environments for testing and demonstration, enabling companies to receive a one-stop service as desired.

Governor Song Ha-jin said, “I congratulate and welcome the splendid start of the autonomous driving demonstration stage, which is a core part of the Digital New Deal,” and added, “I hope that the establishment of the autonomous driving demonstration area for commercial vehicles in the Saemangeum region, which Jeonbuk has carefully developed, will become a new growth momentum leading the future automobile market.”