"Need to Establish Standards for Measuring and Evaluating Communication Performance"
It has been confirmed that the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport (MOLIT) insisted on a specific communication method without conducting accurate performance comparison tests during the process of deciding the vehicle communication method for autonomous driving. Additionally, it was revealed that there are no domestic testing standards or methods to measure and evaluate communication performance in 'congested situations' and 'non-line-of-sight situations' related to autonomous cooperative driving system communication performance.
On the 21st, the Board of Audit and Inspection (BAI) disclosed an audit report regarding the status of autonomous driving infrastructure construction and revealed these findings.
According to the BAI, the government planned to decide on the vehicle communication method for autonomous driving by 2021, aiming for the commercialization of fully autonomous driving by 2027, but the decision was delayed due to differences in opinions between MOLIT and the Ministry of Science and ICT.
With the emergence of new vehicle communication technologies such as LTE-based mobile communication, MOLIT and the Ministry of Science and ICT began discussions in October 2019 to decide whether to adopt the new technology, but MOLIT insisted on maintaining the existing Wi-Fi method.
In particular, even by May 2023, when the audit began, the communication method had not been decided, delaying infrastructure construction. This was because MOLIT did not conduct performance comparison tests between the LTE method and the Wi-Fi method, resulting in a lack of objective grounds for judgment.
During the audit period, the BAI formed a joint task force including professional organizations such as the Intelligent Transportation Systems Korea (ITSK) to conduct comparative experiments between the two communication methods. Based on these results, an expert committee proposed to the government to select the LTE method as the sole communication method for the autonomous cooperative driving system, and finally, the LTE method was decided at the end of 2023.
The BAI explained, "We notified MOLIT to prepare measures to improve work procedures so that objective performance data can be promptly secured through consultations with related agencies when deciding on the introduction of new autonomous driving technologies in the future."
Furthermore, as it was found that the communication performance of the domestic autonomous cooperative driving system deteriorates in congested traffic conditions, MOLIT was notified to prepare measures to improve related standards for verifying the communication performance of autonomous driving systems.
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