Kakao Mobility announced on the 9th that it received the Minister's Award from the Ministry of Science and ICT in recognition of its contributions to the development of the domestic autonomous driving industry and the formation of a data ecosystem.
Kakao Mobility received this award for contributing to the development, standardization, and promotion of open autonomous driving artificial intelligence (AI) data technology, as noted by Hong Seung-hwan, the lead researcher of the AI research and development team, at the results-sharing event for the first phase of the ‘Autonomous Driving Technology Development Innovation Project’ held at Ilsan KINTEX on the 4th.
Kakao Mobility participated in the ‘Core Technology Development for Autonomous Driving Intelligent Learning Data Collection and Processing’ project with the Ministry of Science and ICT, the National IT Industry Promotion Agency, and the Autonomous Driving Technology Development Innovation Project Group (KADIF) to develop technology for reliably generating, managing, and distributing advanced AI learning data for autonomous driving. In particular, it contributed to revitalizing the domestic autonomous driving research and development ecosystem by publicly sharing the ‘Autonomous Driving AI Learning Dataset’ created as part of the project for free on the 'AI Sharing' platform of the Korean Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI) in February.
The dataset consists of over 150,000 AI learning data points (frames) that can recognize and judge dynamic 3D objects such as people, vehicles, and bicycles, as well as static 2D objects like traffic lights and signs, based on data collected from domestic road environments. It is expected to be utilized for the development of autonomous driving AI models suitable for the domestic environment. The domestic startups and academic institutions that had to incur significant expenses and time to secure high-quality AI learning data can now freely utilize the publicly available dataset in their autonomous driving research and development, without copyright issues.
Last August, Kakao Mobility hosted the ‘1st Autonomous Driving AI Challenge,’ a competition organized by the Ministry of Science and ICT, using part of the dataset. A total of 279 teams, including researchers, developers, students, and startups, participated and received praise for utilizing real-world driving data and practically implementing autonomous driving technology, thereby broadening the technology's base and enhancing the overall ecosystem's capabilities.
Jang Seong-wook, head of Kakao Mobility's Future Mobility Research Institute, stated, “I consider it meaningful to contribute to the advanced development of domestic autonomous driving technology and the growth of the future mobility industry through the public release of converged autonomous driving learning data,” adding, “As a leading mobility platform in Korea, we plan to take the lead in developing related technologies and fostering the ecosystem so that autonomous driving can naturally position itself in our daily lives.”