June 2013, Vol. 10 No.
2 9
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 transpor-
tation 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 'Ubiq-
uitous' puts various technologies together
and the end-users' decision greatly influ-
ences building the entire system.
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
R&D", and pushed ahead with VC-10 proj-
ects, 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 communica-
tion technologies and automobile technolo- Eco-friendly Energy Utilization
gies for the next generation. For 7 years
from October 2007 to July 2014, approxi-
mately 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".
Safe Driving in Bad weather
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 man-
agement technologies and automotive
technologies, and the verification part for Auto detection
High-Strength Barrier C
 ustomized real-time infomation

SMART Tolling 1
SMART Tolling 2
WAVE communication
Road condition sensing
commercialization.
The road technology part is to realize the
core values of Smart Highway so they
develop eco-friendly technologies like in-
novative 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 sys-
tem 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-
The Future of Smart Highway
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
Vehicle abnomalty detector
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 im-
prove the quality of life with the conver-
gence of technologies in various fields.
Lane departure prevention Also, it will perform a role to lead the
national development as a new engine to
bring technological competitiveness for
future transportation system.
Auto vehicle control
less Access in Vehicular Environments).
The Smart Tolling system is being devel-
oped for non-stop and multi-lane based Smart tolling verification
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 D
 emonstration in test road
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 estab-
lish and maintain the test site in order to
verify the results of studies and to pro- S
 cene reporting in test road
mote them to the public. Therefore, they
can adopt the outputs of R&D to the exst-
ing roads and verify the performance. Also
they are inspecting system checks for
development technology as well as con-
ducting technology demonstration aimed
at specialist in related institutions, societ-
ies and media organizations. O
 peration center