Kakao Mobility is moving to upgrade its technology as it expands both the scale and coverage of its autonomous driving operations in Seoul’s Gangnam district. Kakao Mobility said on Tuesday it will increase the number of vehicles in its in-house technology-based autonomous driving service, Seoul Autonomous Car, to 6 from 2 from Aug. 20 and expand routes to include protected zones for vulnerable road users.

Kakao Mobility was earlier selected as a Seoul city autonomous vehicle passenger transport operator and began late-night operations in Gangnam in March, running from 10 p.m. to 5 a.m. Over the past 5 months, it has expanded an urban-specialised AI planner that handles the decision-making function in autonomous vehicles and has verified core end-to-end autonomous driving technology in which a single AI model performs everything from perception to control.

With the larger fleet, it plans to collect data on a wider range of unexpected situations more quickly and reflect it in its AI training model. It will also begin operating in protected zones for vulnerable road users, which it said is the first such operation in South Korea for zone-based autonomous driving. The company said it applied a safety control algorithm that slows the vehicle to 80 percent or less of the speed limit when entering protected zones and includes specialised logic that limits rapid acceleration to prepare for sudden actions by pedestrians such as children. It added that it improved perception performance and processing speed by lightening algorithms and optimising sensors.

Kakao Mobility has also added daytime data training in Gangnam since June, building driving patterns for daylight hours with heavy traffic and many pedestrians. It plans to embed driving intelligence across a range of times and raise its ability to operate stably in urban areas in preparation for commercialisation. Kakao Mobility has also been providing Seoul city autonomous driving services in an integrated way through the Kakao T app since September 2024.

Kakao Mobility CEO Ryu Geung-son (류긍선) said, "Based on our own autonomous driving technology capabilities and stable operational performance, we have expanded the scale of operations to improve mobility convenience for citizens during late-night hours, and we have expanded the technology’s scope to include protected zones for vulnerable road users." He said, "While continuing to raise the completeness of the technology by securing data through pilot operations, we will also actively contribute to invigorating the autonomous driving ecosystem by cooperating with local governments and technology companies based on platform technology."