Kakao Mobility has joined the industry ministry's "AI Future Vehicle M.AX Alliance" and will take part as an anchor company in AI autonomous driving. Kakao Mobility will participate as an anchor company in the AI autonomous driving division alongside HL Klemove. It will serve as a focal point for developing a Korea-style AI autonomous driving model. The company announced the plan at the "AI Future Vehicle M.AX Alliance" signing ceremony held on Jan. 15.

The M.AX Alliance is a public-private partnership launched in September last year by the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy and the Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry. It aims to drive an AI transition across the manufacturing sector.

The AI Future Vehicle M.AX Alliance is one of 10 sub-alliances under the umbrella group. Companies and research institutes in finished vehicles, parts and IT are taking part to create successful AI future-vehicle cases that can compete in global markets. Hyundai Motor (finished vehicles), LG Electronics, Hyundai Mobis and HL Mando (SDV), and Naver Cloud (IT) are participating as anchor companies.

Kakao Mobility will work with academia and industry to develop a Korea-style AI autonomous driving model. It will use physical AI capabilities it has built in autonomous driving, robots and digital twins. It will advance E2E (End-to-End) autonomous driving technology that integrates perception, decision-making and control into a single AI model. The goal is to establish a Korea-style standard model based on an E2E-AI approach optimised for domestic road conditions.

As an anchor company, it will 추진 build and open data for AI training and advancement in autonomous driving. Kakao Mobility is working with various partners based on its in-house autonomous driving technology. It has conducted service demonstrations in Pangyo, Gangnam, Daegu, Jeju and Seoul.

It has also taken part in multiple state projects, including "building E2E autonomous driving reference data and developing core technologies", "developing key technologies for collecting and processing intelligent-learning data for autonomous driving" and "automating the creation, management and distribution of converged autonomous driving data".

Kakao Mobility CEO Ryu Geung-sun said, "Kakao Mobility is expanding its role beyond a leading domestic mobility company to a technology company with physical AI competitiveness." He added, "We will devote all our efforts to localising autonomous driving technology and securing global competitiveness, and contribute to achieving the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy's vision for a major AI transition."

Ryu also received a ministerial commendation from the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy on the day. The company was assessed as having lowered barriers to accessing autonomous driving services through various public-facing service demonstrations. It was recognised for contributing to broadening the base of South Korea's future-vehicle industry through collaboration and investment with startups, autonomous driving technology development and data opening.