Kakao Mobility said on the 19th it will increase the number of vehicles for its Autonomous Driving service "Seoul Autonomous Car," which operates across Seoul's Gangnam District, from two to six and expand the service area to protected zones for transportation-vulnerable people.
Kakao Mobility was selected as a passenger transport operator for Seoul's autonomous vehicles and has been operating Seoul Autonomous Car in the Gangnam area during late-night hours since March. Through this increase in vehicles, it plans to secure data needed to advance Autonomous Driving technology and respond to travel demand in the Gangnam area from 10 p.m. to 5 a.m. the next day.
Gangnam is cited as the most difficult area in Korea for autonomous driving because of numerous sudden variables such as motorcycle traffic, illegal parking and stopping, and jaywalking. Over the past five months, Kakao Mobility expanded its city-specialized "AI Planner," the brain of its autonomous vehicles, and has verified the core E2E (end-to-end) Autonomous Driving technology in which a single integrated AI model performs everything from perception to control.
By increasing the fleet to six vehicles, the company expects to collect "edge case" data that occur in various road situations more quickly. It plans to feed the collected data into AI model training to continuously improve driving stability and ride comfort.
The operating area will also be expanded to protected zones for the transportation-vulnerable. When entering a protected zone, the vehicles decelerate to 80% or less of the speed limit, and an active safety control logic limiting rapid acceleration was applied to prepare for sudden behavior by pedestrians such as children. Perception performance and processing speed were also improved through algorithm lightening and sensor optimization. Before and after entering a protected zone, audiovisual alerts are sent to the Autonomous Driving manager to strengthen safety responses.
Technical verification for daytime operations is also underway. Since June, Kakao Mobility has been collecting movement patterns of vehicles and pedestrians during the daytime in the Gangnam area, accumulating data needed for daytime Autonomous Driving.
Since September 2024, Kakao Mobility has provided integrated Autonomous Driving services for Seoul based on Kakao T. Users can select "Seoul Autonomous Car" in the process of hailing a taxi in the Kakao T app without installing a separate app or going through a membership signup process. If it is difficult to dispatch a Seoul Autonomous Car, the request is automatically connected to alternatives such as a regular taxi.
Ryu Geung-seon, CEO of Kakao Mobility, said, "Based on our own Autonomous Driving technology and stable operational performance, we have expanded the scale of operations to improve mobility convenience for citizens during late-night hours and extended the technology domain to protected zones for the transportation-vulnerable," and added, "While continuously increasing technological completeness through data secured from pilot operations, we will actively contribute to revitalizing the Autonomous Driving ecosystem by cooperating with local governments and technology companies based on our platform technology."