SK Telecom (017670.KS) has won recognition for its competitiveness in global telecommunications with driverless autonomous vehicle transport technology. The company plans to use the award as a springboard to commercialize the technology as a physical artificial intelligence service.
SK Telecom said on the 15th that it won the award for Most Innovative 5G Telecom Service at the Network X Awards held in Vienna, Austria, on the 14th. The event is an international conference on wired and wireless telecommunications networks hosted by Informa, a global ICT media and research company, drawing more than 100 expert speakers and more than 1,000 telecom carriers, large companies and startups from around the world.
SK Telecom received the award for its AI-RAN-based Autonomous Vehicle Movement (AVM) technology. Judges recognized the company for presenting new service value and a business model built on fifth-generation (5G) networks. AI-RAN is next-generation network infrastructure capable of delivering telecom services and AI services at the same time. Under the system, lidar sensors installed on site transmit data, and an AI-RAN base station builds a digital twin in real time, calculates a collision-free route and then issues driving commands to the vehicle. Ordinary vehicles without self-driving functions can also be moved without a driver once a module and software are installed. The service was validated through a demonstration of autonomous valet parking at an actual parking facility, where the test vehicle completed self-parking without human intervention.
SK Telecom plans to apply the technology at a domestic automobile plant in 2027 through a state-funded project and verify it in a real industrial setting. The company intends to expand the scope to large-scale logistics sites such as ports and airports, and to develop it into an AI-RAN-based physical AI service as networks evolve toward 5G standalone (SA) and eventually 6G. Ryu Tak-ki, head of network technology at SK Telecom, said, "We will advance physical AI services and accelerate the evolution toward autonomous networks to deliver new value to customers and industrial sites."