Kyungil University (President: Hyuntae Chung) announced that KIU has established the 'Autonomous Driving Vehicle Convergence Technology Research Institute (Director: Professor Woojong Kang, School of Mechanical and Automotive Engineering)' for the development of future automobile technology and cooperation with local automobile companies.

The work of the institute is divided into a technology development field and an enterprise support field. The field of technology development is for the autonomous vehicle platform and system development, cognitive control programming development and high performance car tuning. Joint projects are currently underway with local automobile parts companies to develop an autonomous driving evaluation system.

The company will support the related automobile companies in areas such as lightweight new material testing and evaluation, structural design, image and communication technology development and energy storage device as well as fuel cell technology research. They hope to accomplish this by improving the field of advanced safety and light-weight material research, as well as improving the automobile electric field and automobile energy sources.

In addition, the institute has been developing and testing two vehicles that can run at full-self-level (Level-4 level) within the Kyungil University campus. This will be done in cooperation with LINC + project team and the KIU-MI specialization project team. It also plans to operate a shuttle bus for autonomous driving on the university campus. To this end, a joint technology start-up company plan entitled 'Autonomous A2Z', is being established on the KIU campus.

Woojong Kang, Director of Convergence Technology Research Center for Autonomous Driving Vehicle, said, "we will further strengthen the industry-government- academia cooperation in the automobile industry in the future by working with the excellent professors and researchers in the Automobile Convergence University Departments such as; machinery, electronics, robotics, and new&renewable energy. The infrastructure of industry-academia cooperation teams such as the RIC Center for Automobile Parts Testing, HRD Project for Automobile Parts, and local automobile companies.”

President Hyuntae Chung said, “The establishment of the institute is not limited to the development of autonomous driving technology, but it connects the complex functions of high-tech training for employees of local auto companies, cultivating talented people, and autonomous vehicle parts test certification. The role of the university will be strengthened to create momentum for the stagnant automobile industry in order to grow into a higher value-added pioneering industry."