Happy New Year! We hope your holiday season was enjoyable.

As the new year has now officially begun, it’s time to reflect on the past and look forward to the future.

Autoware Foundation starts the new year with a new Board of Directors!

The co-founders of Autoware, Shinpei Kato (TIER IV) and Yang Zhang (AutoCore.ai), remain on the board of the Autoware Foundation. They have been joined by Samet Kütük from Leo Drive (who also leads the Marketing/Go-To-Market workgroup), Rahul Mangharam from the University of Pennsylvania (who heads the Centers of Excellence initiative), and Larry Dimitrievski from Danlaw, all of whom have joined the Autoware Board of Directors to help bring the project to new levels of success.

In 2022, the Autoware Foundation made significant progress in efforts towards advancing the development and deployment of autonomous vehicles. Here are some of the notable achievements:

• Autoware moved back to GitHub, and the Autoware repository was restructured by merging the Autoware-AI repository.
• The Autoware Foundation introduced the Autoware Core and Universe paradigm and developed the Bus ODD project using the Autoware Universe.
• ITRI and Leo Drive conducted tests of the Bus ODD project using real vehicles. The Autoware Foundation is working on releasing demo videos showcasing these tests soon.
• Mapping Workgroup was created, and many activities around mapping and localization are being undertaken, such as GNSS/IMU fusion, dynamic map loading, sensor calibration tools, camera-based localization and highway mapping/localization.
• The Autoware Foundation has become a member of the SOAFEE initiative, while Open AD Kit 2.0 was developed and showcased at prestigious events such as MIH Demo Day and Arm DevSummit.
• AWSIM was released as open-source by TIER IV to be the default simulator for Autoware. Simulation Workgroup also works and integrates Autoware with other simulators such as MORAI Sim and Carla.

Some GitHub statistics:

• 1,653 Pull Requests merged
• 297 issues closed
• 133 unique contributors

To match these technical achievements, the Autoware Foundation made great strides in

• Revitalizing the foundation’s marketing outreach by working on a new Autoware website, blogging on LinkedIn and Autoware Blog, joining and organizing more than twenty events in three continents
• Expanding the Autoware Centers of Excellence initiative to 11 universities on three continents
• Strengthening its position in the Software-Defined Vehicle development paradigm through alliances
• Committing to fostering growth and success within the Autoware community with sincere dedication.

Thank you for supporting and loving Autoware!