On 16th PST/17th JST December, The Autoware Foundation held its Annual General Assembly. More than 50 individuals from member organizations all over the world joined to share their excitement and aspirations about Autoware, the first and widely-used Open Source Autonomous Driving Software.

Commitment and Aspirations from the Board of Directors

The Chairman of the Board of Directors, Shinpei Kato (Tier IV) shared their commitment to lead and drive the Autoware Foundation to the next stage, by making Autoware available to everyone and expanding its ecosystem including significant challenges to achieve it.

The Autoware Foundation Strategic Goals

The Strategic Planning Committee (SPC), chaired by Larry Dimitrievski (Tata Consultancy Services) and co-chaired by Christian John (Tier IV), announced that two Working Groups (WGs) had been newly established. Led by Robert Day (Arm) and Anthony DeFilippo (ADLINK), Marketing WG and Go-to-Market (GTM) WG would be mainly focused on brand development, membership increase and engagement of end customers. Through various initiateves such as new alliances with AVC Consortium, eSync Alliance and MIH, as well as Autoware Center of Excellence, to be launched in early 2022, the Autoware Foundation will continue expanding its open-souce ecosystem.

Operational Achievements 2021 and next steps

The Operations Committee (OC), chaired by Daisuke Tanaka (Tier IV) announced that Autoware Foundation membership has shown 22 percent growth from the previous year, achieving over 60 member organizations in 2021 4Q. In order to further accelerate membership growth, the OC will continue to strengthen communications/collaborations amongst the Autoware Foundation membership, especially joint marketing with members which need to be organized as collective efforts such as Autoware.IO and regional events.

Technical Recap of 2021 and Plan for 2022

Ryohsuke Mitsudome (Tier IV), Chair of the Technical Steering Committee (TSC) shared achievements (e.g. new ODD roadmap, introduction on SDV Project (AutoCore), Generic Lidar Device Driver Proposal (Tier IV & Nagoya)) and targets of 2022 and also introduced new architecture restructuring Autoware.Auto followed by updates from leaders of each WG, Autonomy Software (SW), Operational Design Domain (ODD), Hardware (HW), Simulation (Sim), Racing and Open AD Kit (OAD).

One of the highlights in 2021 is that TSC WG collaboratively developed new ODD, which is Cargo Delivery. To support this, SW WG has been enhancing the flexibility and capability of SW and they successfully conducted a demo with eve autonomy’s vehicle, integrated with new Autoware.Auto. Hiroshi Igata (ODD WG Lead, Tier IV) addressed that ODD WG developed use cases and adapted scenario testing framework for Cargo Delivery. HW WG is creating a list of hardware used and documenting reference designs of each ODD including hardware configuration of Autonomous Valet Parking (AVP). TSC is now excited about working on the next ODD, Bus, in 2022.

Besides Cargo, TSC accomplished a lot more in 2021 – Racing ODD, Simulation and Open AD Kit. Johannes Betz (Racing WG Lead, Universiy of Pennsylvania) shared achievements in the field of simulation (e.g. completion of Sensor setups for the F1TENTH vehicle in the SVL Simulator) and hardware effort with F1TENTH + Autoware.Auto. Wojciech Jaworski (Sim WG Lead, Robotec.ai) also explained about significant achievements such as integration of first scenario runner with SVL simulator and plans for next year which include integration of high fidelity simulators into CI/CD pipeline. David Walmroth (ODD WG Lead, Ann Arbor Autonomous Vehicle Group) reported that they completed base testing for AD Kit Release 1.0, and near completion for AVA Kit and Autocore PCU.

Guest Speaker: eSync Alliance

The eSync Alliance is a global network of cooperating OEMs, Tier 1s, software and hardware vendors, and cloud service providers. They create a high-confidence multi-vendor path to creating end-to-end secure OTA. Mark Singer (Chair of Marketing Work Group/Excelfore) discussed the construction of a standardized data pipeline, from the cloud to all devices in the vehicle or the vehicle platform, would accelerate autonomous vehicle software deployment.

Guest Speaker: PolyExplore

PolyExplore is focused on HD mapping & Data Collection Services along with Inertial Navigation Systems as their core technology. They have recently joined the Autoware Foundation as an Industry member but they already had been supported projects such as U Power (FKA Zing Robotics) HD mapping project. Gene Rutkevich (VP of Sales and Business Development) shared his enthusiasm to collaborate and grow the communities together.

Guest Speaker: TUM School of Engineering and Design (Technical University of Munich)

TUM Autonomous Motorsport is the research group for autonomous racing and recently participated in Indy Autonomous Challenge (IAC), one of the first fully autonomous races.

Our Racing WG enjoys collaborating with them. Alex Wischnewski, the team leader of TUM Autonomous Motorsport, explained autonomous challenges especially on the way which they approach to the challenges.

Guest Speaker: MIH Consortium

MIH is an open EV ecosystem initiated by FOXCONN with over 2000 members to bring the strategic partners together to build the next generation of EV, autonomous driving, and mobility service applications. Ted Lien (Autonomous Driving Consultant MIH/Senior Manager Foxconn CTO Office) shared updates on the MIH EV Kit initiatives and how they collaborate together with us.

We enjoyed gathering together despite the world-wide time differences. Many thanks to the attendees – we’re looking forward to seeing you again soon!