The entire city of Gwangju is being transformed into a “regulation-free” zone for autonomous vehicle demonstrations. Within Gwangju, regulations related to autonomous driving will be exempted, and dedicated vehicles and artificial intelligence (AI) data training infrastructure will be provided.

The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport announced on the 21st that it will designate Gwangju as a demonstration city for autonomous driving. This is the first time in Korea that an entire city is being created as a demonstration city, and a budget of KRW 61 billion will be invested this year.

Accordingly, the whole of Gwangju will be designated as a special regulatory zone for autonomous driving and will be operated as an autonomous driving sandbox starting in April. Regulations related to autonomous driving, such as the obligation for manual driving in child protection zones (school zones) and the obligation to de-identify personal information in video data, will be relaxed. Autonomous vehicles will operate on actual roads, including general roads, residential areas, city centers, and in nighttime environments. The project will start with manned autonomous driving and will gradually transition to unmanned operation based on annual evaluations.

For technology development within the demonstration project, 200 dedicated vehicles operating 24 hours a day will also be provided. Three companies participating in the demonstration project will be selected through an open call in April, and vehicles will be allocated differentially to each company according to their technological capabilities. Full-scale demonstrations will take place in the second half of the year (July–December). The dedicated vehicles used in this project are designed with a software-centric architecture to enhance system stability and control precision.

Data collected during the demonstration will be standardized so it can be interoperable among participating companies. To share and train on the standardized data, dedicated graphics processing units (GPUs) at the Gwangju National AI Data Center will be provided.

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