en.Wedoany.com Reported - South Korea will introduce a rail robot fire preemptive response system in expressway tunnels in the capital area. This project is supported by the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport's "Digital Road AI New Technology Support Project," with a total project cost of approximately 4.07 billion won. The project period is from July 2026 to June 2027, lasting one year, and the demonstration will be conducted at the Su-ri-san Tunnel (total length 1.73 km) on the Western Capital Area Expressway.

The project is led by Oseco Co., Ltd., and promoted by a consortium involving Eseon Co., Ltd. and DBentech Co., Ltd. Its core technologies are a special monorail and a rail robot platform. The high-strength aluminum alloy rail installed on the tunnel ceiling serves as both the robot's movement path and an integrated facility for power supply and communication network. It continuously supplies power to the robot via a collector shoe method, enabling 24-hour uninterrupted operation without the need for charging or battery replacement, and allows the robot to move quickly throughout the entire tunnel without interfering with vehicle traffic.

Three types of robots are deployed on the rail. The surveillance robot is equipped with a live-view camera, a thermal imaging camera, and temperature, humidity, and gas environment sensors, conducting 24-hour unmanned patrols to detect danger signs within the tunnel. The guidance robot, in the event of an accident, controls vehicles and guides personnel evacuation through electronic display boards (VMS) and voice broadcasts, preventing secondary chain accidents. The firefighting robot is equipped with a precision control nozzle linked to AI fire point detection and a compressed air foam system (CAF), capable of automatically tracking the fire point for initial firefighting.

Each robot has a high-speed travel performance of up to 18 km/h and precise positioning capabilities. When AI detects a fire and it is confirmed by a control personnel, the robot can arrive at any location within the tunnel in under one minute. This demonstration will install monorail infrastructure and surveillance, guidance, and firefighting robots on both the up and down lines of the Su-ri-san Tunnel to verify performance in an actual operating environment.

The rail robot from Eseon Co., Ltd. is the result of the "Intelligent Tunnel BM Task (Development of Digital Twin and Intelligent Rail Robot for Smart Road Tunnel Management, 2021~2023)" project under the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy's core technology development project for the robot industry. It has secured original technologies for special monorails and intelligent rail robots. The company holds patents related to intelligent road tunnel management systems, underground common duct monitoring devices and methods, tunnel control image correction devices, and registered designs for aluminum alloy rail profiles. Its monorail mobile monitoring device has been registered as a developed product by Korea Southern Power Co., Ltd. and has operational track records at industrial sites such as power plants.

In this project, the rail robot is combined with AI video analysis technology. AI analyzes CCTV footage within the tunnel in real time, detecting fires and emergencies at a maximum distance of 200 meters. After confirmation by control personnel, the rail robot is dispatched immediately. From fire point confirmation, vehicle control, and evacuation guidance to initial firefighting, the robot fills the response gap before the fire department arrives. The consortium plans to verify the end-to-end performance from AI detection and robot dispatch to initial firefighting through official tests and field demonstrations. The demonstration results are expected to help establish performance standards for AI-based anomaly detection and preemptive response systems in national tunnel disaster prevention guidelines.

After the demonstration, the plan is to expand the application scope of the rail robot from public markets, such as the Korea Expressway Corporation and local government tunnel management agencies, to high-risk private facilities like power plants, industrial plants, and underground common ducts. Kim Eung-uk, CEO of Eseon Co., Ltd., stated that the rail robot is a technology to replace humans in hard-to-reach or dangerous situations. Through this expressway tunnel demonstration, the company aims to prove the rail robot technology capabilities accumulated from the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy's R&D to field operations at power plants, and to develop it into a representative South Korean safety robot technology for protecting citizens' lives from tunnel fire threats.