KT and Hyundai Motor are developing a safety solution that combines precise location information and vehicle data for children's school buses to manage everything from boarding and alighting to whether anyone remains inside the vehicle. The plan is to detect if a child is left behind in the car and automatically notify guardians of boarding and alighting status, thereby preventing incidents of children being abandoned in school buses.
KT announced on the 2nd that it has signed a 'Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) for Developing a Dedicated Safety Solution for Boarding and Alighting of Children's School Buses' with Hyundai Motor, MTR—a specialty mobility company—and KidsNote, a smart notification platform provider. The four companies will jointly develop a service that links vehicle data with school bus operation services to manage children from boarding through transit to alighting.
KT will be responsible for communication and cloud platforms as well as precise location services. In particular, it will utilize the 'RTX Fast' precision location service developed in collaboration with Trimble. RTX Fast is a technology that determines vehicle position at the lane level using satellite signal correction technology. It allows for more accurate monitoring of school bus movement compared to conventional location information, enabling integration with safety services.
Hyundai Motor will provide vehicle data. MTR will develop children's school buses based on Hyundai Motor's Staria EV, and handle the application of in-vehicle safety devices, self-certification, manufacturing, and sales. KidsNote will manage the parent-facing application and notification service, connecting vehicles with guardians.
The four companies plan to also incorporate AI (artificial intelligence), UWB (ultra-wideband), and BLE (Bluetooth Low Energy) technologies in the future. Through this, they aim to implement functions such as detecting children remaining inside the vehicle, real-time location sharing, automatic verification and notification of boarding and alighting for children, in-vehicle safety monitoring, and automatic driving log recording.
They will also develop a function that detects emergency situations using boarding/alighting and vehicle movement data. Rather than simply providing the current location of the vehicle, this approach integrates management to verify whether children have boarded and alighted normally and whether anyone remains inside the vehicle. The four companies envision evolving school buses into a 'moving child care platform' that manages the entire process of children's transportation through this initiative.
The first application target will be the children's school bus developed and self-certified by MTR based on the Staria EV. In the future, they plan to expand the range of applicable vehicle models and broaden the service area beyond academy vehicles to include welfare transport vehicles and mobility support for transportation-disadvantaged individuals.
Noh Hyung-rae, Executive Vice President of KT Enterprise Division Gi Eop-sa-eop (Head), stated, "Based on KT's communication and AX capabilities and RTX Fast-based precision positioning technology, we will implement children's school bus services and expand the use of precision positioning to various mobility and industrial sectors in the future."
in TECH
