“When we passed Death Valley by supplying funds in a timely manner in the technology development stage, the private sector also Love call"...Autonomous a2z > News (주)오토노머스에이투지

“In the process of full-fledged technology development and commercialization since the establishment of the company, the growth-sharing funds from the Small and Medium Venture Business Corporation have been a great help. That's the goal."

Han Ji-hyeong, CEO of Autonomous a2z, founded the company in 2018 and developed an autonomous vehicle solution within less than a year and entered mass production. In June, it started the practical procedure for a demonstration project for autonomous driving service with LG U+. LG U+ has decided to provide a vehicle platform for autonomous driving services such as 5G communication (5G) and dynamic precision maps.

Prior to this, Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology (GIST) and artificial intelligence (AI)-centered unmanned autonomous driving platform are expanding cooperation by participating in the development of autonomous driving patrol cars and autonomous driving systems for unmanned delivery vehicles.

As such, the main factor that was able to produce cooperative results not only in large companies but also in various fields was the timely supply of funds necessary for growth. In particular, the 1 billion won in growth-sharing funds invested by the Korea Advanced Institute of Technology has become a strong support group that can show the company's technology.

CEO Han said, "I was confident that I had sufficient technology, but I needed more than a certain amount of capital to receive R&D funds from the government. It would have been impossible to show,” he said.

With this support, Autonomous a2z has completed its own development of LiDAR signal processing technology, the core of the autonomous driving system, and recognition, judgment, and control algorithms for autonomous driving. It has already installed the system and has completed driving tests of 17,000 km on the actual road by last May. Implementing fully autonomous driving in a specific area is a priority for CEO Han.

Last year, it won the representative prize in the 4th Industrial Revolution contest hosted by the Ministry of Science and ICT and the 4th Industrial Revolution Committee for its technological prowess through driving tests on the road. It was also selected for the driving sensing category. The number of employees increased from four at the time of the company's founding to 35 in two years. As additional support of up to 10 billion won will be provided to BIG3 companies, future growth expectations are high.

CEO Han said, "I think it is very encouraging that we have achieved so much with only government loans and R&D support without external investment from private funds." there is," he said