The Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport or known in the public as CVG has teamed up with Korea originated tech company ThorDrive, entering into a groundbreaking moment with the former company; bringing the technology of autonomous vehicles (AV), or the known self-driving cars technology developed by the latter, to be applicable to the airport's vicinity, last November 21.
CVG has reached upon the agreement developed with ThorDrive, the now Cincinnati based company for almost a year. AV cars rounding around the vicinities of the airport are expected to take place earliest next year.
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In a statement by CVG Chief Executive Officer Candace McGraw, she expressed the company's appreciation and firm trust to ThorDrive as a "great innovation partner." She also implied that just like their other partner start-up companies, established ones and universities/institutes all across the US, their new partner company could help them by "injecting talent, technology and economic growth" all in one to their campus and region for the overall improvement of their operations as a leader of the airport industry.
ThorDrive founder and chairman of the board Dr. Seung-Woo Seo in return also affirmed that their partnership with CVG is incredibly significant, stating their pleasure as another "CVG first mover." He also mentioned that the two entities involved will relay to the airport's stewardship to "foster meaningful innovations."
Brief History of the AV Team
CVG was established in the early 1940s. Yet it continuously evolved as time passed by, integrating different sorts of innovation in different aspects. Today, it serves as a home for both passenger and cargo planes. Currently the airport houses 13 passenger/commercial airlines, including big and known airlines such as the American Airlines, Delta Air Lines, Frontier Airlines, United Airlines, and many more. Cargo plane airlines also found a home in CVG, including Amazon Air and FedEx Express.
ThorDrive on the other hand is still a young, fresh, and continually evolving company despite being an exceled technological company and has already tied-up with much older established companies and organizations such as CVG. It began with the autonomous technology that was developed at the Seoul National University, yet it was tested on a larger, real-world scale for over three years to date, and has reached over 80,000 miles.
AV Technology to Silicon Valley
Now they continue their operations on the famous Silicon Valley, the home of the headquarters of some of the biggest technology-based companies in the world such as Microsoft, Apple, Google, Facebook, etc. Still, their core of autonomous technology has been their main instrumental key that brought them to the land of the tech giants, and they continue to develop just like their AV technology.
The AV system's history started many years already, as early as the 1920s. The 1950s has seen the beginning of trials for the technology. And in the 1970s, the Japanese based Tsukuba Mechanical Engineering Laboratory paved the way for the first officially known tests of the AV system.
Today several tech companies are allocating funds, time, and efforts to produce more advanced quality technology of the AV system. CVG along with ThorDrive might be one of the pioneering partnerships to fully utilize this technology in a real-time application.
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