Kakao Mobility’s autonomous ride-hailing service “Seoul Self-Driving Car” has completed more than 2,000 trips over six months in the heart of Seoul’s Gangnam district, accelerating the refinement of its self-driving technology. The vehicles navigate tunnels where satellite signals are blocked without wavering, and the frequency of safety driver interventions has dropped sharply. Starting last month, the service expanded its operating area to include child, senior, and disabled protection zones.<\/p>\n
During a test ride conducted at 11 p.m. on the 31st of last month in a tunnel in Seoul’s Gangnam-gu, the GPS signal on a smartphone map app was cut off, yet the Seoul Self-Driving Car exited the tunnel while maintaining a stable speed. The safety driver in the driver’s seat never touched the steering wheel. A Kakao Mobility official explained, “When GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite System) signals are unavailable, the vehicle determines its position through sensor fusion using LiDAR, cameras, and radar.”<\/p>\n
The Seoul Self-Driving Car is built on the Kia (000270.KS) EV6 electric vehicle. Mounted on the roof is the company’s proprietary sensor kit, the “AV-Kit,” which houses LiDAR, radar, cameras, and other sensors. In total, the vehicle is equipped with seven cameras including those in the kit, five radar units, and three LiDAR units. According to the company, this hybrid perception system provides 360-degree awareness around the vehicle, and the AV-Kit’s modular design allows sensors to be swapped or repositioned, making it installable on other vehicle models.<\/p>\n
Kakao Mobility is developing not only the sensors but also the driving artificial intelligence (AI) and data training pipeline in-house. The approach involves feeding real-world driving data back into AI training to improve performance. Gangnam-gu is considered a high-difficulty area for autonomous driving due to frequent lane cutting, illegal parking, and jaywalking. The Seoul Self-Driving Car repeatedly navigates these streets to collect “edge cases”\u2014unexpected situations that arise on the road. Cumulative driving distance has surpassed 10,000 kilometers, and a single hour of driving generates gigabytes (GB) of data.<\/p>\n
As autonomous driving technology has matured, the number of required sensors has decreased. The vehicles first deployed in March were equipped with five LiDAR units, but the newly added vehicles carry only three. Given that the autonomous driving equipment alone currently costs more than the price of an EV6, sensor optimization is a critical challenge for commercialization. A Kakao Mobility official said, “To scale autonomous driving services at a large scale, we need to improve perception performance while simultaneously reducing the number of expensive sensors to lower costs.”<\/p>\n
Despite the reduction in sensors, driving performance has actually improved. Compared to the early days of operation, the number of times safety drivers have had to intervene directly has fallen significantly, and recently there have been many trips completed without a single intervention. During the approximately 30-minute test ride that day, the safety driver never once took the wheel.<\/p>\n
User response has also been positive. The average rating from users who participated in evaluating the Seoul Self-Driving Car service was 4.97 out of 5. The company reported that a significant number of passengers were surprised by the autonomous driving performance, which exceeded their expectations after actually riding in the vehicle. Over the past six months, there have been zero reported accidents involving people or property, and the only accident that did occur was a case where a following vehicle rear-ended the Seoul Self-Driving Car.<\/p>\n
Starting on the 20th of last month, the fleet was expanded from two vehicles to six, and the autonomous driving area was extended to include child, senior, and disabled protection zones. Previously, autonomous driving functions could not be used in these zones due to relevant regulations, requiring safety drivers to take manual control. When the Seoul Self-Driving Car entered a child protection zone during the test ride that day, the road displayed on the rear-seat monitor turned red, and the vehicle’s speed dropped noticeably.<\/p>\n
Kakao Mobility has applied a separate safety control algorithm that limits speed to 80% or less of the posted limit in vulnerable road user protection zones. In a 30 km\/h zone, the maximum speed is 24 km\/h; in a 50 km\/h zone, it is 40 km\/h. The company plans to consider gradually adjusting the speed thresholds once sufficient driving data has been accumulated in protection zones and no significant safety issues have emerged.<\/p>\n
Light rain of 1\u20132 millimeters per hour fell in Gangnam that day, but it did not affect operations. For safety reasons, Kakao Mobility temporarily suspends Seoul Self-Driving Car operations when precipitation exceeds 5 millimeters per hour. However, the company explained that if rainfall exceeds 5 millimeters per hour mid-trip, the vehicle will complete its journey to the destination.<\/p>\n
Challenges remain. The current vehicles lack a dedicated cleaning system to automatically remove water droplets or debris from sensors, meaning heavy rain or snow could degrade the perception performance of cameras and LiDAR. Ride comfort was also not perfectly smooth across all segments. During the test ride that day, the Seoul Self-Driving Car braked abruptly when a traffic light turned red just before a right turn.<\/p>\n
The scale of operations also still falls short of demand. Although the fleet was tripled from two to six vehicles, it is not easy to hail a Seoul Self-Driving Car at a desired time. Vehicle utilization rates exceed 80%, resulting in a significant number of failed ride requests. Operating hours are limited to 10 p.m. through 5 a.m., and the service area is confined to Gangnam-gu\u2014both of which must be addressed for service expansion.<\/p>\n
Kakao Mobility is reviewing plans to increase operating hours, service area, and fleet size. Since June, the company has been collecting daytime driving data in Gangnam. The company explained that daytime autonomous driving in Gangnam is technically more challenging than nighttime driving due to the higher volume of vehicles and pedestrians and the greater frequency of unexpected situations.<\/p>\n
Expanding the service area beyond Gangnam is also under consideration. A Kakao Mobility official said, “We are considering areas beyond Gangnam, such as Seocho and Songpa, where service expansion will be needed after the fleet increase,” adding, “Given that we have recently announced partnerships with multiple OEMs, we are also reviewing the development of new vehicle models.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Kakao Mobility’s autonomous ride-hailing service “Seoul Self-Driving Car” has completed more than 2,000 trips over six months in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":139432,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[6486,70937,70939,30148,70938,851,3012,70936,15940,112,64614],"class_list":["post-139431","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-seoul","tag-autonomous-driving","tag-av-kit","tag-child-protection-zone","tag-gangnam-gu","tag-gnss","tag-kakao-mobility","tag-kia-ev6","tag-level-4","tag-lidar","tag-seoul","tag-seoul-self-driving-car"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139431","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=139431"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139431\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/139432"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=139431"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=139431"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=139431"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}