Seoul City to test self-driving robots for delivery

The Seoul metropolitan government has decided to test self-driving robots for delivery in some areas in Gangnam, including COEX Mall and Teheran street. The city government announced on Wednesday its plan to test self-driving delivery robots for 18 months from this month until November 2023. Self-driving delivery robots recognize their surroundings using rider sensors and deliver items or food to designated locations using GPS.

The test will be conducted from restaurants in COEX Mall to offices in the Trade Center building with high foot traffic. Then, it will expand to the area spanning from restaurants to the lobby of offices in Teheran street next year. “COEX Mall and Teheran street are a shopping center and a large office facility with over 33,000 employees staying there at all times and 40 million visitors per year, which make them perfect locations to test self-driving delivery robots,” said a member of the Seoul metropolitan government. “Issues identified during the test period will be continuously addressed.”

Eleven self-driving delivery robots of three types will be used for the test and the two-year project budget is 1.97 billion won. The metropolitan government conducts the project along with Woowa Brothers, LG Electronics, WTC Seoul, Land and Geospatial Informatrix Corporation, and Gangnam-gu Office. The project was selected by the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy as a project to demonstrate a large-scale robot convergence model based on artificial intelligence and 5G technology.

Through the project, the Seoul metropolitan government will obtain data for demonstration with a focus on office areas with high demand for delivery robots and use the data to develop operation standards and data protection guidelines for using robots in the future.


Seng-Hyun Kang byhuman@donga.com