[AI Revolution](49) Kakao Mobility Becoming the Voice of Citizens Through AI Technology

There is an application that serves as a means of transportation for citizens both domestically and abroad, including taxi rides during the morning commute and late-night designated driver calls. It is Kakao Mobility's ‘KakaoT’. This app incorporates Kakao Mobility's artificial intelligence (AI) technology throughout its services. In addition to lifestyle-oriented services such as taxis and parking, Kakao Mobility plans to introduce future mobility technologies including autonomous driving and robots.

Differentiating Lifestyle-Oriented Services by Integrating AI Technology

KakaoT is the largest mobility app in South Korea, with a cumulative user base reaching 35 million. One of the most frequently used services in this app is taxi hailing. Although it may seem like a simple service connecting drivers and passengers, various AI technologies are applied to it. To connect drivers and passengers, securing the ‘immediacy of movement’ is most important. This involves calculating the real-time locations of drivers and passengers to derive the optimal value that satisfies both parties. This calculation is performed by the ‘AI dispatch system’.

When the service was first launched in 2015, taxis were dispatched based on the proximity of GPS coordinates between drivers and passengers in a straight line. However, it was found that in cases where buildings had to be bypassed or there was traffic congestion, taxis located somewhat farther away were dispatched faster. Therefore, starting in 2020, the ‘AI dispatch system’ was introduced, which analyzes about 30 variables such as day of the week, time of day, taxi supply and demand status, and driver call acceptance rate using machine learning (a method where computers learn like humans to acquire new knowledge) to optimize the connection between drivers and passengers. The average dispatch time, which was 14.1 seconds before the system was introduced, decreased by 39% to 8.6 seconds after implementation.

In 2021, Kakao Mobility became the first in South Korea’s parking app services to introduce AI-based ‘parking lot full occupancy prediction information’. This technology analyzes vast amounts of data accumulated from the KakaoT parking service to predict congestion levels by time of day. Similarly, most services offered on KakaoT, including designated driver, quick delivery/courier, bike, and aviation, incorporate extensive big data and machine learning technologies.

On the 10th, a Porsche Taycan equipped with a mobile mapping system was exhibited at the tech conference "Next Mobility: NEMO 2022" held at COEX in Gangnam-gu, Seoul. Hosted by Kakao Mobility, this conference brought together global tech leading companies at the mobility tech conference NEMO 2022, where attendees could explore future mobility technologies such as autonomous driving and HD maps. Photo by Moon Honam munonam@

Leading the Way in Securing Mobility-Based Technologies

Kakao Mobility is also at the forefront of building future mobility technologies.

Last year, Kakao Mobility established an in-house ‘Future Mobility Research Institute’. This dedicated organization aims to advance innovative technologies for future mobility and maximize synergy among related technologies. In January of this year, they also opened ‘Nemo Garage’, which consolidates hardware research facilities and personnel necessary for autonomous vehicle research and digital twin construction. A digital twin refers to the virtual representation of machines, equipment, or objects from the real world within a computer-generated virtual environment. Securing a dedicated digital twin research institute is a first in the platform industry.

A digital twin for mobility means building data for moving objects such as autonomous vehicles, delivery robots, and urban air mobility (UAM). This generally pertains to outdoor or travel route data. Mobility digital twins, which represent actual locations and cover a wide scale, require data connectivity and scalability as well as high-precision sensor fusion technology. Currently, Kakao Mobility’s technological level is sufficient to implement both indoor and outdoor digital twins.

Robot delivery service operating in the in-house cafe at Kakao Mobility

Since the year before last, Kakao Mobility has been accelerating efforts to establish a ‘skyway’ foundation while preparing for the advancement and commercialization of UAM services. UAM is recognized as a core future mobility technology that not only alleviates urban traffic congestion and enhances travel convenience but also operates on eco-friendly power sources such as electric and hydrogen fuel cells. Recently, Kakao Mobility formed a consortium in the ‘K-UAM Grand Challenge’, a public-private joint demonstration project promoted by LG Uplus and the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport, opening the door to future mobility collaboration.

Currently, half of Kakao Mobility’s workforce is engaged in research and development (R&D). Among them, 30% are dedicated to fundamental technology research in areas such as digital twin, autonomous driving, route planning, real-time location information processing, and AI research and development. Based on the technological capabilities accumulated so far, Kakao Mobility plans to build a service ecosystem that encompasses future mobility and beyond.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.