Decades before the giants Tesla and Google plunged into the autonomous vehicle race, a South Korean professor perfected a driverless vehicle, which he
tested in several countries before abandoning his research
.
The
79-year-old Han Min-hong's
car
emerged in 1993, a decade before the creation of Tesla by Elon Musk.
Two years later,
with no one behind the wheel, his vehicle hit the country's busiest highway along the 300 kilometers that separate Seoul from the port city of Busan
.
An office computer equipped with a screen and keyboard sat in the driver's seat while Han was in the back.
"Bold and risky"
"It was extraordinary", recalls the inventor who, with his team of enthusiasts, devoted hours to this
"unpublished project"
.
At this time, South Korea, more inclined to heavy industry, was still far from becoming the technological power that it later became.
His projects were seen as risky
.
Some worried about whether he had life insurance and whether his wife was aware of his
"crazy activities
.
"
The professor was so convinced that their cars were safe, that he
hardly ever buckled up
.
The government, which saw no interest in his project, stopped funding his research at the University of Korea.
Today Elon Musk's electric vehicle company is a behemoth, while
Han has only one employee at his small company in Yongin
(south of Seoul), where he develops
warning systems
for autonomous vehicles.
Musk is "formidable and exceptional," Han says
admiringly.
But he
regrets that his invention could have made it easier for South Korea to dominate that sector today
.
Raj Rajkumar
, a professor of engineering at the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University, in the United States, observed the images from the 1990s for Afp. For him there is no doubt that
"they are part of the best work done in the field. of autonomous vehicles at that time
.
"
"The professor and his colleague are not even sitting in the driver's place
," it was "very bold and risky," according to him.
Min-hong in his 'laboratory'.
In his opinion, it is regrettable that the financing of the project had ceased, because "looking at it from now on, it was certainly not a reasonable decision."
The University of Korea calls Han a "pioneer and hero
on the international artificial intelligence scene."
The professor also conceived
of South Korea's
first
automobile
navigation system
and a mini-helicopter that foreshadowed drones.
A genius
He is considered in his country as a genius ahead of his time and
the videos of the 1990s have been viewed more than 1.5 million times since their publication on YouTube last February
.
Autonomous vehicles are now the subject of a bitter technology dispute.
Giants like Alphabet, Google's parent company, spend billions of dollars in that promising market
.
Last year, Tesla announced that it was "very close" to level 5 for autonomous driving technology, which corresponds to full range.
Han Min-hong with his autonomous 'creature'.
For Han, this is a level comparable to that achieved by his work in the 1990s.
"As Tesla is considered the best car in the world, if the occasion presents itself, I would like to compare our technology with his," he
added.
The dream would be to see both models driving along the Bugak Skyway, a narrow and winding road that passes over a mountain in the north of Seoul.
"Of course, Tesla invested a lot in the tests, and therefore it is possible that this technology is more sophisticated," he considers.
"But
there shouldn't be many differences in basic operation
," he added.
However,
for him technology has its limits: true driving autonomy is almost unattainable
as vehicles cannot adapt as well as humans to unforeseen situations.
For Han, autonomous vehicles will be widely used for the
transport of goods and not so much for the transport of people
.
According to the criteria of The Trust Project
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