We are starting to create a monthly newsletter on the latest activities at Autoware Foundation’s technical working groups. We have so much going on that we felt compelled to share these insights with the LinkedIn audience to get attention for the good work getting done at Autoware Foundation.

Here’s a quick overview

First and foremost, the technical working groups at the Autoware Foundation are governed by the Technical Steering Committee. Recently (since March 2023), working group activities have been granularized by spinning out component-specific sub-working groups (perception-sensing, localization-mapping and planning-control) out of the software working group.

There are ten working groups (including sub-working groups) actively working. These are:

• Software working group (core working group)
• Perception & Sensing working group (as a sub-working group)
• Localization & Mapping working group (as a sub-working group)
• Planning & Control working group (as a sub-working group)
• Operational Design Domain (ODD) working group
• Simulation working group
• Racing working group
• Open AD Kit working group
• Reference Design working group
• API working group

For a detailed explanation of the working groups, you can visit the wiki at Autoware GitHub.

Why are we doing this?

Every third Thursday of the month, the Technical Steering Committee, assembled by the premium members of the Autoware Foundation and chaired by Ryohsuke Mitsudome, comes together for the report on working group activities. The committee hears from the working group leaders and makes informed decisions.

We decided to report to the public a watered-down version of technical working group activities to entice.

• individual developers to get more involved by giving them quick snapshots of the development pipeline
• Autoware Foundation member organizations retain and grow their technical contributions by providing them with a stage to demonstrate their work.
• and prospective member organizations to better understand the status quo at Autoware’s technical roadmap and activities, as well as, again, by providing them with a stage to show their work to the broader community and collect feedback on their technology from real-world users.

Here are some recaps from the Technical Steering Committee Meeting #58:

Software Working Group

• Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI)(工業技術研究院, 工研院) is about to complete their final integration tests on their public road-going bus to finalize the Bus ODD work.
• A new build GUI prototype developed using Foxglove Studio (and featured by Foxglove) (credits: Khalil Selyan, Gökçe Nafak, Leo Drive) https://www.linkedin.com/posts/foxglovedev_prototype-leo-ui-using-foxglove-studio-and-activity-7108161071143665665–hFH?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop)

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

• A new PR for Dynamic Object Removal from an existing point cloud map (credits: Davut Can Akbaş, ADASTEC Corp.)
• Leo Drive is working on Eagleye (developed by MAP IV, Inc.) localization technique performance evaluation.
• A progress report on Geo-referenced point cloud map generation effort is available for review (credits: Ata Parlar, Leo Drive)
• Leo Drive team is evaluating LIOSAM performance with various LiDARs. A progress report is made available

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

• Planning modules are being tested using AWSIM (credits: M. Fatih CIRIT)
• Armagan reported an issue with delay compensation and slope compensation features in the current control stack. It has an issue when used simultaneously
• A progress report is available on Dynamic drivable area expansion

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

• New PRs opened on TIER IV LiDAR driver to support RoboSense LiDARs
• TIER IV is working on new ML models to improve detection accuracy
• Discussion on ROI point cloud fusion is ongoing

Operational Design Domain (ODD) Working Group

• In the past five weeks since the latest Technical Steering Committee meeting, a total of 690 scenario tests were performed on Autoware CI/CD, and 608 out of 690 tests were passed. Mainly, left turn cases were found faulty, and the faults were associated with the map-related issues.
• The use case list has been brushed up, and some typical scenarios have been prototyped.
• Discussed the need to address the roundabout (traffic circle) use cases based on the discussion in the Planning & Control sub-working group.

Simulation Working Group

• The option to change the initial pose of the Ego Vehicle in the configuration file is added.
• Scenario Simulator 2 <> AWSIM integration for OpenSCENARIO support is ongoing. Functionality is ready, and OpenSCENARIO scenarios are ready to run with AWSIM. Also, the ZeroMQ connection between ss2 and AWSIM was stabilized.
• AWSIM and Autoware testing continues. A series of tests [1][2] were performed
• An issue was found in the LiDAR simulation, resulting in low FPS.
• Robotec.ai assigned 0.5 FTE for debugging the errors and verification of the AWSIM.

Racing Working Group

• The Autoware project was integrated with the F1Tenth Foundation platform
• Successfully tested all of the features in the Autoware on F1tenth documentation, running in both F1tenth gym simulator and on real-car
• Build a map with SLAM and test localization.
• Record a trajectory by manually driving the car.
• Replayed and followed the trajectory.
• Released of the first version of Autoware on F1tenth documentation with demo videos in the first week of September
• The documentation is currently being tested by Clemson University and HUMDA Hungarian Mobility Development Agency
• HUMDA has reported successful replication of the Autoware on F1tenth demos, running on Jetson AGX Orin

Open AD Kit Working Group

• Strategy alignment continues with external parties such as SOAFEE, eSync Alliance, MIH, AWS, and other member prospects for the foundation.
• Open AD Kit working group continues to work on Open AD Kit demos to be exhibited year-round.
• IROS 2023 Open AD Kit demo efforts continued successfully. The AADP platform is currently used on a PIX Moving Pixkit chassis, connected via a KVASER CAN connector hardware and software container. This on-vehicle demo will likely be converted into an Open AD Kit reference design.
• 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
• Development environment and production environment implementation discussions continued. -> Reducing Autoware container size and optimizing developer and production environments

Reference Design Working Group

• eSOL talked about multi-kernel real-time OS for mixed critical systems
• seL4 Foundation talked about their world’s first correctness-proof OS and provable security for autonomous vehicles
• TIER IV released their L4 Customer Design Guidelines document.
• The first draft of the Reference HW design documentation is out for comments and suggestions.

API Working Group

• The API Working Group is focusing on the V2X case studies in Europe, the US and Taiwan and on how to enable V2X within the Autoware project.
• The roadmap is a work in progress, starting with the Vulnerable Road User (VRU) use case.
• Implementation of V2X Router for Autoware is being scoped out.
• The interface design for the VRU use case is being scoped out.
• Some other use cases are currently under careful assessment, including VRU and cooperative perception, CARMA platform, Preemption use, and Distributed consensus using V2X

Saying goodbye for this time…

That’s all for September 2023. This was the first TSC update newsletter, and expect to see later editions. Don’t forget to subscribe to the newsletter and come back and read the next TSC update.