June 2013, Vol. 10 No.

SMART Highway

Opening the future of high-tech road transport system

by Korea Expressway Corporation

The Development of Ubiquitous

Transport Environment
Since the ITS (Intelligent Transport System)
development plan that the presidential
investment plan group started to review
in April 1993 and confirmed in September
1997, ITS has been developed rapidly.
The optimization of traffic management,
electronic toll collection, real-time traffic
information and advanced public transportation are the main subjects of ITS studies.
Those technologies are already adopted
and used for Hi-Pass, BIS (Bus Information
System), Automated Enforcement System,
Navigators, TPEG, and so on. The concept
of 'Ubiquitous' that means 'anywhere,
anytime or simultaneous' is being widely
spreaded in transportation system of the
21st century, so called U-Transportation.
The environmental changes also made the
ITS field become 'Ubiquitous'. now 'Ubiquitous' puts various technologies together
and the end-users' decision greatly influences building the entire system.

R&D", and pushed ahead with VC-10 projects, including the Smart Highway R&D
project.
The purpose of Smart Highway R&D Project
is to develop safer and more convenient
highways by means of converging the higly
advanced road technologies, IT communication technologies and automobile technologies for the next generation. For 7 years
from October 2007 to July 2014, approximately 400 researchers from 68 institutes
have been participating in the project with
the total budget of 80 million USD under the
slogan: "World Best Smart Highway".

Structure of Smart Highway project

Smart Highway project is composed with
the road technology part in the hardware
field, the intellectual technology parts,
such as communicational traffic management technologies and automotive
technologies, and the verification part for

Eco-friendly Energy Utilization

Safe Driving in Bad weather

Auto detection

Initiation and Smart Highway

To keep up with the trend, the Ministry of
Land and Transport devised "Innovation
Road Map of Construction and Transport

The Blueprint of Smart Highway

High-Strength Barrier

 ustomized real-time infomation

C

The Future of Smart Highway

SMART Tolling 1

Vehicle abnomalty detector

SMART Tolling 2

Lane departure prevention

WAVE communication

Auto vehicle control

Road condition sensing

commercialization.
The road technology part is to realize the
core values of Smart Highway so they
develop eco-friendly technologies like innovative sound absorbing wall and solar
powered facilities. Also, it includes the
R&D projects to minimize traffic accidents
by means of enhancing visible distance in
foggy weather and preventing or melting
freezing loads.
The communicational traffic management
part develops smart communication system and traffic management system that
enables two-way communication. Thus, it
includes Smart-I that detects unexpected
incidents in roads and notify the drivers
on the roads. Furthermore, they develop
multi-used base station and terminals that
accept various protocols like WAVE (Wire-

less Access in Vehicular Environments).

The Smart Tolling system is being developed for non-stop and multi-lane based
electronic toll collection, which will be able
to replace the current Hi-Pass system.
The automotive R&D part is to realize safe
driving environment by connecting roads
and vehicles so the researchers develop
the radar technologies to detect road
conditions like freezing, hydroplaning,
fallen objects and to warn drivers about
them. Also, they develop lane departure
warning system that uses highly precise
GPS (DGPS: Differential Global Positioning
System) and they develop the automatic
vehicle control system for emergencies.
Lastly, in the verification part, they establish and maintain the test site in order to
verify the results of studies and to promote them to the public. Therefore, they
can adopt the outputs of R&D to the exsting roads and verify the performance. Also
they are inspecting system checks for
development technology as well as conducting technology demonstration aimed
at specialist in related institutions, societies and media organizations.

Until now, although the road construction

contributed to industrial development of
the Republic of Korea, it also has negative
images due to traffic congestions, high
accident rate in the capital area. There
seems to be a limit to fulfill the demand
of users since their standard of living is
elevating.
In this situation, the Smart Highway will
overcome the internal limitation and improve the quality of life with the convergence of technologies in various fields.
Also, it will perform a role to lead the
national development as a new engine to
bring technological competitiveness for
future transportation system.

Smart tolling verification

 emonstration in test road

D

 cene reporting in test road

S

 peration center
O