Mars Auto Wins 18.2 Billion KRW Government Project for Large Truck Autonomous Driving AI

On November 6, Mars Auto, a truck autonomous driving startup, announced that it has been selected as the lead organization for the consortium in the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy’s strategic project, "Development of Unmanned Autonomous Driving Commercialization Technology for Large Truck Freight Transport," with a total budget of 18.2 billion KRW. With this contract, Mars Auto will take the lead in commercializing mid-mile autonomous driving in South Korea.

Mars Auto plans to actively utilize its proprietary camera-based "End-to-End AI" (E2E AI), which it has been developing since 2020, as the core technology for this project. E2E AI is an autonomous driving technology in which a single integrated neural network, trained on vast driving datasets, performs perception, decision-making, and control in an integrated manner.

Compared to autonomous driving systems that rely on LiDAR and HD maps, this approach reduces component and maintenance costs by more than 90%. It is also characterized by its flexibility in responding to irregular driving patterns on the road. This method has been adopted by Tesla in its latest systems and is becoming the next-generation standard in the global autonomous driving industry.

Through this project, Mars Auto aims to: ▲ commercialize camera-based E2E AI tailored for large trucks; ▲ build a large-scale real-world driving data pipeline covering 100 million kilometers to address irregular situations on highways; and ▲ implement a remote control platform for safe autonomous freight transport. The company plans to demonstrate and commercialize unmanned autonomous driving technology for highways.

A total of 13 organizations from industry, academia, research, and government are participating in the Mars Auto consortium. The project will run for 28 months, from September of this year to December 2027. Park Ilsu, CEO of Mars Auto, stated, "The mid-mile logistics market is valued at 33 trillion KRW domestically and 5,500 trillion KRW globally. This project will serve as a practical turning point leading to innovation in the national logistics infrastructure. Based on our accumulated expertise in truck autonomous driving technology, we will take the lead in commercializing unmanned transport on highways and securing global competitiveness."

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