Here’s a concise summary of what happened last month at the technical working groups of the Autoware Foundation.

Software Working Group

• In last month’s newsletter, we mentioned that the folks at Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI)(工業技術研究院, 工研院) have completed their Bus ODD demo shooting in Taiwan. As the work in editing and mixing continued withing the last month, we anticipate that we will be able to release the second Bus ODD demo video on Autoware Foundation’s YouTube channel in a few weeks. Stay tuned! Huei-Ru Tseng
• In Autoware, we used a CUDA version from Ubuntu 20.04 with a workaround because NVIDIA did not release the TensorRT for Arm until recently. Now that it’s released, we started testing the CUDA 12.3 version with x86-based and Arm-based systems and validated that the update works well. This update also reflected positively on the Autoware Docker image size. Also, Ansible scripts are updated successfully. M. Fatih CIRIT, Esteve Fernández, Oğuz Kağan Öztürk
• Built on top of last month’s activity, M. Fatih CIRIT released the Launch Unifier Tool to simplify the launch structure of the Autoware project. This will make understanding Autoware’s launch structure easier and streamline debugging. Make sure to check it out!

Localization & Mapping Working Group (as a sub-working group)

• The localization & mapping working group went through our roadmap spreadsheet and reorganized the working group’s goals towards giving it a finer granularity. At the Strategic Planning Committee, we will soon compose and reflect these feature goals in a release format. Work in progress; stay tuned!

Planning & Control Working Group (as a sub-working group)

• The planning & control working group continued working on running on hilly road testing (#5391, #5121) created by the community after their vehicle and simulation testing.
• Also, the working group is working towards improving Autoware’s planning behavior against obstacles (#3964), incorporating perception improvements for clustering and tracking-based detection of obstacles.
• Finally, the working group is studying various planning presets (#680) for different use cases, which will improve the ease of use and flexibility by switching launch modules.

Sensing & Perception Working Group (as a sub-working group)

• The sensing & perception working group is working on adding training documentation for the lidar centerpoint package. The documentation explains how to train custom CenterPoint models and convert them into applicable formats for deployment in Autoware. The added documentation will be released soon. PRs are in place. Kaan Çolak
• The working group also improves the image segmentation-based point cloud filter (#3974). Detection of some objects, such as growing plants and bushes on the roadside or discarding point clouds resulting from raindrops, exhaust gases or such non-trivial elements, is a struggle.

Operational Design Domain (ODD) Working Group

• Since the latest Technical Steering Committee meeting, a total of 554 scenario tests were performed on Autoware CI/CD, and 502 out of 554 tests were passed. The remaining slight number of failed cases are due to left turn cases, and they are being reviewed.

• A new scenario is added to the automated testing called “unprotected right with limited visibility.”
• Leo Drive contributed to port TIER IV’s basic scenarios on the virtual maps. There will be 374 new scenarios; however, due to the cloud resource limitation, new scenarios may be tested at a lower frequency than weekly testing. As of November 12, an initial 130 new scenarios were uploaded and tested.

Safety Pool™ joined the ODD working group meeting on November 20, and they plan to provide the comprehensive safety scenario database to Autoware Foundation. Also, they work closely with ASAM e.V.

Simulation Working Group

• OpenSCENARIO support for AWSIM is upcoming! The feature is moved to the public AWSIM repository and PR is waiting to be merged.
• The design of the verification procedure for the AWSIM and Autoware project continues. Scenario simulator and AWSIM are being tested on ITRI scenes since the ODD working group prepared ITRI LL2-based scenarios.

Racing Working Group

• Autoware Universe perception packages debugged and tested working (achieved real-time, 20-30 FPS multi-object detection and tracking with camera input) on F1Tenth’s Jetson Xavier NX. It will be released to the F1tenth branch shortly. F1Tenth Foundation
• The Autoware CoE team at the University of Pennsylvania is exploring various simulation environments for the AV4EV go-kart platform. The team is collaborating with AlexanderRex, who built the AV Go-Kart simulation, which is based on Unreal Engine and the CARLA simulator

Open AD Kit Working Group

• Software portability continues to be a major drive at the Open AD Kit working group. WG participants from semiconductor companies are using Autoware to prepare demos for the upcoming #CES2024 show.
• Ad-hoc meetings are continuing to assess the performance of the very granular containerization of Autoware. Interesting preliminary performance comparisons are observed, and discussion and further experimentation will continue. Release plans envisioned but pending announcement.
• DevOps Dojos effort is continued -> DevOps Dojo dashboard
• The ROS Node update effort is continued (a call for volunteers is in place) -> ROS Node update status spreadsheet. We also created a liaison with the ROS community where Kasper Mecklenburg will introduce ROS-related efforts at the Open AD Kit WG to pull in more attraction and resources from the ROS community.
• CES demo preparations are ongoing successfully. Open AD Kit demos will be exhibited in at least three spots at the upcoming CES show.

Reference Design Working Group

• Discussions on the organization of reference design documents were continued.
• The group reviewed two reference design drafts from F1Tenth and AV4EV Go-Kart
• Created a draft schematic overview for reference design document. Here’s a draft of the meta-metric matrix.

API Working Group

• The API working group published a sample API definition for review.
• The working group created a demo of integration with a DANLAW OBU and Autoware project, showcasing a use case where the autonomous vehicle changes lanes when an emergency vehicle starts broadcasting its position and lane closure notification.

• A use case on virtual traffic light interface using V2X was also presented
• Since the proposed API definition is accepted, all the relevant APIs will be defined in the coming WG meetings.

Don’t forget to come back for the next TSC Update newsletter!

And please subscribe to this newsletter and other Autoware Foundation LinkedIn newsletters!

We also started the Centers of Excellence newsletter as well. Check it out here.

There is just so much going on at the Autoware Foundation. Make sure to like/repost our LinkedIn content and visit our website at autoware.org