Professor Seung Woo Seo of SNU is reading a book inside an autonomous vehicle of ThorDrive on March 5th. For three years, it has traveled 60 thousand kilometers in Seoul’s congested downtown without a single accident. In a sense, Professor Seo, who has conducted research in autonomous vehicle technology for the past twelve years, is living ahead of time in an upcoming world. The professor said, “As the era of autonomous vehicles is drawing near, there has to be a new definition of drivers. Do not be afraid and ride on the wave of change with a mindset speculating on how to exploit this opportunity.”

The engineer who has studied autonomous vehicles for the longest period of time in Korea owns no car. SNU ECE Professor Seung Woo Seo(55), ‘the mentor for engineering students’, gets off at Nakseongdae subway station and walks about 40 minutes to get to his research laboratory for work. When asked why he has no car, he answered, “I decided to keep my hands off the steering wheel until autonomous vehicle technology is completed. Thanks to this, I am getting exercise.” He has lived in this manner for the last five years.

Last year, there were 217,148 traffic accidents, amounting to 3,781 deaths and 323,036 injuries. The proportion of pedestrians among the deaths(39.3%) is twice the average of OECD nations. Professor Seo said, “If you analyze the cause of car accidents, 95% is due to human mistakes. The three seconds immediately before the accident are called ‘the decisive moment’. Unlike humans, because autonomic cars instantly recognize and respond to the dangers in an unforeseen situation, they can prevent the accident or decrease the number.”

In 2015, he founded ‘ThorDrive’ with his students. It is an autonomous vehicle related startup that has gathered attention for starting an autonomous delivery service last year in Silicon Valley, the United States. In the upcoming fall, it will be possible to observe unmanned cars delivering items to customer homes in Korea as well. E-mart recently announced that it will collaborate with ThorDrive to begin a trial delivery service with autonomous vehicles.

March 5th, Sang-am dong, Seoul. On an autonomous vehicle with a temporary car plate ‘임 3720’, are the words written ‘your artificial intelligence(AI) driver’. It is equipped with a sensor(laser scanner) that detects objects and perceives their location to judge the situation, a GPS(Global Positioning Service) antenna, radar, and six cameras. Professor Seo, who has accumulated technology and experience from developing and managing the autonomous vehicle ‘SNUver’ as the director of the Intelligent Vehicle IT Research Center since 2009, said, “After 3~4 years looking for a field in which to apply autonomous vehicles, I have decided on ‘delivery’.”

“We have reached 70% of the goal”

There are six levels of autonomous driving technology, starting from ‘level 0’ where humans manage the vehicle entirely, to ‘level 5’ where AI takes a hundred percent control of driving without human intervention. Professor Seo said, “ThorDrive has driven 60,000km over three years in the congested downtown Seoul including Yeouido without an accident. We hope to achieve level 4(no driver intervention in specific regions and situations) and believe that we have reached approximately 70% of this level.”

-Why delivery in particular?

“At the time, other companies were developing autonomous vehicles for passenger transport. Rather than making a late entry into that market, we decided to go down the road of parcel delivery. We predicted that the market for transporting parcels would open faster in complex cities than that for people. It is because it is safer and more efficient.”

-The startup’s name contains the name of the thunder god ‘Thor’

I like the Marvel character Thor. He is related to electricity (laughter), flies in the sky, and is strong as well.

-While listening to you, I realized that Thor’s hammer is also auto-driven(?).

“Ha ha ha. In a sense. The hammer goes around the universe doing work as the owner intends.”

-The autonomous vehicle is the machine with which the public can experience AI for the first time. Also, with the aging society, there will be an increase in the number of car accidents.

“That is because drivers of advanced age experience a decline in cognitive ability and motor control. Autonomous vehicle technology gives them time to react and saves lives.

-Last January, you attended the world’s largest IT and consumer electronics show (CES), which was held in Las Vegas, the United States.

“There was an atmosphere considering autonomous vehicles as no longer being an issue of technology. The hottest topics in the car exhibition section were applications and services. Some companies were operating autonomous taxi service downtown.”

-I will be frank. Where does ThorDrive stand in terms of world level?

“No autonomous vehicle has entered level 5. In the level 4 section, Google is leading, and we are going after them.
To elaborate, we have tackled commonly occurring situations but must conduct tests for rare circumstances such as the road being blocked because of on-going construction. I told you just now that we have achieved 70% but to complete an engineering product, the final climb is always the most difficult. The remaining 30% will be tough work.”

-What technologies does Google have that we do not.

“Google’s autonomous vehicles are able to differentiate an ambulance. They recognize it with cameras and the siren sounds. When an ambulance passes by, it either stops or stands aside. We have not secured the technology to pick up characteristics based on audio.”

Good students are conservative and they avoid adventures

When Professor Seo selects new graduate students, he does not look at their grades. He said that he spotted several shortcomings in students who entered SNU College of Engineering and were considered gifted. They excel in taking tests but are lacking in adventurous spirit, perseverance, ambition, teamwork, and thoughtfulness. He noted, “Working with students, I realized that effort and enthusiasm can sufficiently compensate for a deficiency in intelligence.”

-What are your criteria if you do not consider grades.

“I choose based on exactly what I feel during the interview. I carefully watch to see whether they have ambition and determination. Aggressive students overcome difficulties.”

-What problems do students with good grades have?

“Starting from kindergarten, they passed an intense competition for admission where they were lined up to be accepted. Perhaps that is why they are too cautious and tend to avoid risk-taking. They prefer stable jobs and many more are transferring to medical school or law school while attending the school of engineering. Not many will take the risk to go for a startup.”

-Why is that.

“I guess that being cautious and conservative and avoiding adventure were a kind of self-protection system to survive in the competition for college admission.”

-How do you guide such students.

“I provide stimulation. I guess I myself is a model to refer to. A professor is a stable job, but I did something others do not. It could occur to them that it is possible to live in such a manner. In the Intelligent Vehicle IT Research Center, you have to tack on your research results to the car and test it, whatever the outcome. You could be roaming around, riding the autonomous vehicle for 10 hours a day. With such experience, you become more eager for field work and taste a sense of accomplishment. You are learning from the real game, not theory.”
There has to be justification to work. Professor Seo said, “I am cautious about saying so, but as an engineer who started research in autonomous vehicles and established its framework, I want to contribute to the Korean society.” As one of the main issues that Korean education should resolve, he pointed out the separation between university and society. “Before I graduated and left the school gate, I rarely had the opportunity to dig up social problems, ponder on the solution or to gain experience in the field.”

-In your book, “Leave your house with a morning thrill (아침 설렘으로 집을 나서라)”, there was a sentence as such. The equation to success in life is ‘a reorganization of the inner program that achieves major successes by imprinting minor accomplishments’.

“That is something that I often tell the students. If you often experience minor successes and feel its subtle charm, you can gain bravery and confidence. It becomes the stepping stone for challenging yourself with bigger accomplishments.”

-It is said that 20~30% of SNU’s current students fail to adapt to university life.

“There is no problem in reality that healing can resolve. Consolation is sweet, but it only lasts for a few hours. You have to get on the rollercoaster life again to overcome the confronting problem. The difference is made with ‘a little courage’.”

-What turning points did you have in life.

“It was about 10 years ago. In the days when bicycles were given out if you subscribed to newspapers, I rode around SNU’s circular route twice. Everyone tried to stop me saying, ‘With a cheap bicycle without even a gearbox, it is impossible,’ but I did it. I gained a little courage. I realized then that I should not presume limitations. I tell my students too to give it a try, only then will realize its potential.”

-Have you also experienced disappointment and despair?

“Immediately after I was appointed in SNU, my field of specialty(high speed switching technology deployed in computer networks) faced the threat of being thrown out of the market. I was attracted to cars while searching for a new research field. I was scorned for getting my hands on cars even though I did not major mechanical engineering and was overlooked. I was even asked whether I knew cars had four wheels. My research proposals were denied consecutively. I stayed positive, thinking that this was a period like traveling through meandering paths and climbing rocks in order to hike a mountain.”

A philosophical question posed by the era of AI

ThorDrive first began commercialization in the United States last year. In Korea, laws related to autonomous vehicles have not been reorganized, and regulation poses a high barrier that even ran aground car sharing. However, “Going to the United States was for a much more important reason,” said Professor Seo.

-What was it?

“In Korea, there are no research groups for autonomous vehicles that we can compete with or benchmark. In Silicon Valley, there are tens of such companies. We went over because of the abundance of opportunities to learn through comparison and to make progress in technology.”

 
ThorDrive’s autonomous deliver car is parked in front of a store in Palo Alto, California, the United States, in last December.

-I heard that California was the place with the least regulations on autonomous vehicles.

“In California, one cannot get money for delivering with an autonomous vehicle. In Arizona, Texas, Michigan, and Florida, there are already paid services in place. We are planning to expand to the market there. We cannot return as a losing pitcher or after failing to gain recognition when we went there for a face-to-face confrontation. I am sometimes anxious and tensed up, afraid that we will lag behind in the competition if we are lazy even for a moment.”

-In the latter half of this year, you are beginning a delivery service with E-mart.

“Parcels are delivered from an E-mart store to, say for instance, the security office in an apartment. This is a temporary experiment. The purpose is to check customer feedback and to fix inconveniences before autonomous vehicles become common. We could also try to come up with a method to use a different robot to transport the object to the front door after the autonomous vehicle delivers it to the apartment.”

-With the current law, a person has to be in the driver seat, right?

“Yes. With advances in autonomous vehicle technology and a social consensus, this can become a ‘game changer’ that will transform our lives. You could let go of the steering wheel and read books, watch movies, or get a catnap for the one hour of commutation. With autonomous vehicles and sharing economy, not even parking lots are necessary.”

-At the end of last year, a driver who had fallen asleep in the driver seat while completely drunk was under arrest for drunk driving. At the time, the Tesla car was in autonomous driving mode. The driver defended himself saying, “I was riding an autonomous vehicle, and I was not driving.”

“A redefinition of driver is necessary before the commercialization of autonomous vehicles. There needs to be education about the role of the driver in various levels of autonomous driving. There also has to be a technology to stop a car when the obligatory rules are violated.”

-Sometimes, we hear of accidents involving autonomous vehicles. The public accepts human error but if it is due to a technical flaw, their reaction differs. How can this problem, which will appear in the era of AI, be approached philosophically?

“Even if it were safe in ten thousand experiments, there could be an unforeseen situation in the 10001st trial. First of all, we have to raise the level of technology and safety to nearly 100%. For shortcomings, cooperation of social systems such as insurance is necessary.”

-Anything you expect from the government.

“Service is service and technology is technology. It is not impossible to implement a service without domestic technology. They should not insist on ‘bottom to top’ methodology where Korean components are combined to autonomous driving and each step is taken one at a time to implement a service. I wish they would not interfere based on fixed ideas but approach this with flexible thinking. Silicon Valley has become a sacred place for autonomous driving because there exists a social atmosphere where new technology and risk-taking is not feared. We should also create such an industrial ecosystem.”

-The public fears change even while looking up to creative thinking. There is both anticipation and concern surrounding autonomous cars.

“When you have to leave the box you are accustomed to, there is always fear. There needs to be bravery in order to cross a threshold. Change tends to rush in. The key point is having an outlook on how to exploit an opportunity as if in surfing. When you are at the crossroad of choices, I hope you ask to yourself, ‘Will I feel regret ten years later if I do not do this? If I choose this, how much more will I grow?’

Boston Consulting Group of the United States predicts that the scale of the autonomous driving market will reach 42 billion dollars (approximately 46.6 trillion won) by 2025. With the upcoming era of autonomous vehicles, our government plans to make revisions in the concept of driver. A reformation in the insurance system is also inevitable. The Korea ROAD Traffic Authority is preparing an AI driver’s license.

Source: http://ee.snu.ac.kr/community/news?bm=v&bbsidx=48600
Translated by: Jee Hyun Lee, English Editor of Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, jlee621@snu.ac.kr