General Motors (GM) will launch Super Cruise, the auto industry's first commercialized hands-free driver assistance system, in Korea. GM plans to release Cadillac vehicles equipped with Super Cruise domestically within the year and to review the possibility of applying it to other brands later.
Super Cruise is GM's advanced driving technology that allows the vehicle to keep or change lanes and adjust speed on its own even when the driver takes hands off the steering wheel. Detecting the driver's gaze to enable hands-free operation is what sets it apart from general driver-assistance and cruise control functions.
Chae Myung-shin, executive director overseeing digital business at GM Korea, said at a press briefing held at the Oakwood Center in COEX, Gangnam District, Seoul, "Super Cruise is the first hands-free driving assistance technology in the domestic market," adding, "It was first applied to the Cadillac CT6 in 2017 as an industry first and has reached its current stage over the past 7 to 8 years through market and customer feedback."
Typically, driver-assistance and control functions like Super Cruise operate by detecting whether the driver is watching the road ahead. While most functions offered by other domestic automakers verify forward attention by requiring the driver to place hands on the wheel, GM says Super Cruise detects gaze by tracking the driver's eyes and head direction. If the driver does not look ahead, the system issues escalating warnings using visual, auditory, and haptic cues; if there is no response, the vehicle slows to a stop and the function disengages.
In North America, cumulative driving distance using Super Cruise is about 877.7 million km (22,000 laps around the Earth). It currently operates on more than about 970,000 km of roads in the United States and Canada, with plans to expand to about 1.2 million km by the end of the year. In Korea, more than 23,000 km of highways and major arterial roads can be driven with Super Cruise.
Korea is the third market where GM is introducing Super Cruise, after North America and China. For the Korean launch, GM built a high-definition (HD) map optimized for local road conditions and will operate a dedicated in-Korea map over-the-air (OTA) server to incorporate the latest road information.
Ha Seung-hyeon, head of the technology development division at GM Technical Center Korea, said, "We carried out localization tailored to Korea's road environment, which differs from North America and China where Super Cruise has already launched," adding, "We incorporated real-time information, including bus-only lanes that do not exist on U.S. roads, as well as construction zones from the Korea Expressway Corporation."
Chae said, "We introduced Super Cruise preemptively because headquarters sees Korea as a strategically important market," adding, "More than 10 billion won in direct investment has been made." Chae added, "Competition among automakers is intense in the domestic market, and driver assistance systems are diverse," noting, "The vehicle will be imported after U.S. certification under the Korea-U.S. Free Trade Agreement (FTA)."