SEOUL, 20 Nov 2017:
While driverless cars in the urban environment is already a reality today – albeit awaiting enough evidence to be fully unleashed on city roads – the same cannot be said for off-road environments.
“The barriers in nature aren’t so well defined as city roads,” explained Soutk Korea’s Agency for Defence Development manager and principal researcher Kim Ihn Cheol in a recent interview at the two-day Innopolis Tech Fair 2017 in Daejeon, a major technology research hub located about an hour south of Seoul.
“There aren’t even paved roads or sidewalks the sensors can bounce radar or infrared signals off. And most times, it’s just bushes and overgrowth. This makes it very challenging for driverless vehicles, which need reference points for navigation.”
Kim said the South Korean army has developed such off-road sensor technology and has already begun testing with some of its vehicles off-road.
“Being able to send out unmanned vehicles in battle zones for reconnaissance or to retrieve the injured can offer a major advantage and we’re proud to have developed such technology.”
Since there isn’t much use for such technology in war-torn areas these days, Kim said the South Korean army is conducting talks with commercial driverless technology purveyors to licence its off-road sensor advances.
“Soon, we may no longer needs any roads and that can mean less demand for limited resources like tar for road paving.”
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