This photo, provided by Hyundai Motor Co., shows one of its self-driving cars passing through a toll gate after making a successful self-driving test on the 190-kilometer Seoul-PyeongChang expressway on Feb. 2, 2018.
SEOUL, Oct. 5 (Korea Bizwire) — The South Korean government plans to extend coverage of a high-precision road map, critical to the development of self-driving vehicles, up to 20,000 kilometers by 2022.
The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport announced on Sunday that it will develop a high-precision road map covering about 14,000 kilometers of general national roads by next year.
The high-precision road map (scale of 1:500) is an electronic map that describes roads and neighboring facilities such as traffic lanes, signals and road facilities in a three dimensional manner.
The map is a basic requirement for the development of self-driving technologies and Cooperative Intelligent Transport Systems (C-ITS).
The new map contains 14 different kinds of information on traffic lanes and signals, enabling the position of self-driving vehicles to be accurately detected even when the weather is bad or GPS systems have poor connectivity.
With about a high precision map covering about 6,000 kilometers of the nation’s major high-speed expressways and urban areas already being established, the ministry is pushing to expand the scope of the road map towards general national roads starting from this year.
In particular, the ministry earmarked 16 billion won (US$13.7 million) in next year’s budget to develop a high-precision road map of the general national roads for four major regions, including the Seoul metropolitan area, the Gangwon area, the Jeolla area and the Gyeongsang area.
Ultimately, the ministry expects the new map to cover a total of about 20,000 kilometers of roadway with a focus on the nation’s arterial roads by the end of 2022.
Kevin Lee (kevinlee@koreabizwire.com)
