In an interview with BusinessKorea, Lee Eui-jun, managing director of the Korea SMART Highway Study & Application Center, discussed several new technologies that are currently being tested as part of the project.
The Smart Highway Project—funded by the national Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport (formerly the Ministry of Construction and Transportation)—is working to develop new technology in three main traffic-management-related areas: roads, wireless traffic management and automobiles.
One of the larger innovations to come from the R&D Center is what Eui-jun calls the Smart-I. The system combines cameras, auto-tracking closed circuit televisions and radar to detect obstacles on several kilometers of roadway in real time. The system can detect obstructions as small as 30 cm within 30 seconds, with 95% accuracy to date.
Information about the obstruction is then passed on via the WAVE (Wireless Access in Vehicular Environments) system. Also utilized in vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) and vehicle-to-base communications, WAVE can transmit data by WiFi, DSRC and other communication networks.
Eui-jun also discussed a non-stop, multi-lane smart tolling system that does not require cars to slow down or find designated lanes.
