Tokyo, Japan | Hoehenkirchen, GERMANY | May 15, 2025 – The Autoware Foundation, home to Autoware, the world’s leading open source project for autonomous driving, is excited to announce that ASAM e.V., one of the leading organizations for implementation-level standards in mobility development, has joined the Autoware Foundation as an alliance partner.

At the same time, the Autoware Foundation has become a member of ASAM e.V., This mutual partnership reinforces the commitment of both parties to collaborate more closely with respect to advancing standardization and interoperability across the autonomous vehicle industry.

Autoware is already using ASAM’s open standards, such as ASAM OpenSCENARIO, to describe driving scenarios for simulations and is currently extending its adoption to include ASAM OpenDRIVE. The ASAM OpenX standards are widely applied in the simulation domain, offering a robust ecosystem that integrates seamlessly into different simulation environments.

Currently, both organizations are evaluating the integration of ASAM SOVD into the Autoware Open AD Kit. ASAM SOVD, which is currently being transferred to ISO, is designed to standardize access to compute units in software-defined vehicles (SDVs). The Autoware Open AD Kit, which integrates a variety of SDV practices, could help significantly expand market adoption of the standard.

The partnership between ASAM and Autoware was initiated by Deepen AI, a safety-first tools and services company, enabling intelligent technologies for autonomous systems, and an active member of both organizations. 

As part of this initiative, Deepen AI has organized several joint meetups in the US Bay Area in the recent past to initiate and sustain a dialogue between ASAM, Autoware, and key industry stakeholders, fostering a shared vision for a standardized and interoperable autonomous vehicle ecosystem.

“We see strong potential in collaborating with the Autoware Foundation to advance standardization and interoperability in autonomous driving,” said Marius Dupuis, CEO of ASAM. “By aligning our efforts, we aim to broaden awareness and adoption of our standards.”

Christian John, Member of the Board of the Autoware Foundation adds: “Collaboration is key to making autonomous driving a reality. With ASAM, we have a strong partner to bring standardization and open-source development closer together and drive meaningful progress in the field.”

The collaboration between ASAM and the Autoware Foundation can serve as a significant indicator to the industry that open-source software and standardization can work hand in hand to accelerate innovation in autonomous systems.

For more information, visit us at www.asam.net or autoware.org, or visit us at the ongoing exhibition: ADAS & AV Technology Expo Europe between May 20 – 22, 2025, in Stuttgart. Visit us at the Deepen AI Booth on Hall 9, Stand number #9500

About the Autoware Foundation

The Autoware Foundation is a non-profit organization that hosts the Autoware project, the world’s leading open-source software project for autonomous driving. The Autoware project is built on Robot Operating System (ROS), and through using open source, it lowers the entry barrier to autonomous driving technology and enables commercial deployment of autonomous driving in a broad range of vehicles and applications.

Autoware Foundation has a vision to build open-source software for globally trusted autonomous driving systems that engage and advance society, and is on a mission to co-create a neutral, trusted hub that advances safety and beyond in mobility and society. Learn more about the Autoware Foundation on autoware.org

About ASAM e.V.

ASAM e.V. (Association for standardization of automation and measuring systems) is an international non-profit organization that develops standards for the mobility industry. ASAM promotes collaboration between OEMs, Tier-1 suppliers, tool vendors and academics to create standardized interfaces and data formats for vehicle development and diagnostics. With over 400 member companies worldwide, ASAM drives standardization in areas such as simulation, testing, measurement, and vehicle diagnostics, fostering innovation and improving efficiency in automotive development. ASAM standards are key building blocks for the development of automated vehicles and support the adoption of software-defined vehicles. Learn more about ASAM and our standards on www.asam.net

About Deepen AI

Deepen AI is a safety-first data lifecycle company specializing in machine learning and AI for autonomous systems. Our customizable tools and services support enterprises and start-ups worldwide.
Deepen AI also supports safe autonomous vehicles through initiatives like Safety Pool and taking part in ASAM standardization, including ASAM OpenLABEL, ASAM OpenODD, ASAM OpenXOntology, and ASAM OpenSCENARIO DSL. (www.deepen.ai/)

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TOKYO, December 19, 2024—Autoware Foundation, home to Autoware, the world’s leading open-source project for autonomous driving, is excited to announce that MulticoreWare Inc., a global technology company offering software solutions and engineering services, has joined the Autoware Foundation as a premium member, marking a significant step towards enhancing Autoware’s AI-based perception capabilities through collaborative work.

MulticoreWare specializes in optimizing BEV-based Vision Transformers such as BEV-Former, BEV-SegFormer for real-time inference on automotive SoCs, AI accelerators and in quantizing camera and LiDAR fusion models, like DeepFusion and BEV-Det, from FP32 to INT8 without significant loss of accuracy. They have also  developed advanced AI Camera 2D & 3D perceptions algorithms for micro-mobility, as well as two and four-wheel vehicles, optimizing over 80 AI models for low-power edge devices, DSPs, and NSPs.Autoware Foundation and MulticoreWare will jointly introduce new AI-based BEV (Bird’s Eye View) modules to Autoware’s perception stack, using multi-camera and multi-modal fusion approaches. Today, BEV-style detection models are highly sought after by autonomous vehicle companies, OEMs, and Tier-1 suppliers¹. Transformers-based models are becoming the de facto standard for any autonomous stack, even on lower-level ADAS functions.

Shinpei Kato, Chairman of the Autoware Foundation said, “We are thrilled to partner with MulticoreWare, to introduce cutting-edge AI-based perception features to the Autoware stack. This collaboration is a great example of how openly and efficiently we can collaborate with industry leaders such as MulticoreWare and improve Autoware’s capabilities through collaborative partnerships.”

AGK Karunakaran, President and CEO of MulticoreWare said, “Our collaboration with the Autoware Foundation reinforces our commitment to open-source innovation. By contributing our advanced AI perception and edge intelligence optimization capabilities to Autoware’s perception stack, we aim to work closely with the Autoware Foundation and its industry partners to drive the development of safe, scalable, and practical Advanced Driver Assistance (ADAS) and autonomous systems.”

¹https://multicorewareinc.com/power-of-aerial-perspective-birds-eye-view-approaches-in-focus/

About the Autoware Foundation

The Autoware Foundation is a non-profit organization that hosts the Autoware project, the world’s leading open-source software project for autonomous driving. The Autoware project is built on Robot Operating System (ROS), and through using open source, it lowers the entry barrier to autonomous driving technology and enables commercial deployment of autonomous driving in a broad range of vehicles and applications.

Autoware democratizes autonomous driving technology through open-source development and is committed to creating synergies among the world’s leading technology companies, academic/non-profit organizations, and individual contributors.

For press inquiries

press@autoware.org / https://autoware.org/

About MulticoreWare

MulticoreWare delivers software IP Solutions and Engineering Services serving a wide group of customers with solutions like Hardware Platform Compilers & Toolchains, SDK Libraries, Video codecs, and Algorithm & Data Engineering using vision & non-vision sensors (Radar, LiDAR, IMU, GPS). MulticoreWare’s solutions are being used in Automotive (ADAS/AD), Surveillance, Defence, Smart Health, IoT, Industrial, Robotics, Smart Cities. Their industry-leading video codec products (x266/x265/Ultraziq) are used in live streaming or VOD services across many broadcast customers.

www.multicorewareinc.com

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Several industry leaders, including the Autoware Foundation and its member companies, as well as UXL Foundation’s steering committee member companies have engaged in the project with contributions from Arm, Imagination Technologies, Intel and Qualcomm.

The Concept

One of the goals of this collaboration is to show that the UXL Foundation libraries provide a performant and feasible path for the automotive industry to develop robust and portable software.  By doing so, the effort required to deploy software on a diverse set of devices will be reduced, which is desired by automotive OEMs and Tier1s.

Common Implementation

The common implementation will use a generic shared baseline running on the CPU to bootstrap this initiative.

This collaboration is to also enabling progress toward making Autoware software-defined by ensuring software portability across various hardware platforms. By introducing the oneMKL library to Autoware software via the Open AD Kit project, the Autoware software stack becomes less dependent on the underlying hardware and strengthens the flexibility when deploying on various hardware targets, regardless of vendor. 

The main domains of interest to utilize within oneMKL are LAPACK, BLAS and FFT, while the main application of interest to demonstrate on Autoware’s software is LiDAR point cloud processing.

Specific Implementation

The collaboration between the UXL Foundation and the Autoware Foundation may extend to specific implementations in the future, allowing vendors to create an optimized solution for a specific target backend (such as using proprietary libraries, compiler, driver, and runtime) while keeping the application layer and the oneMKL layer consistent.

“The Autoware Foundation is excited to collaborate with the UXL Foundation to introduce software portability to the Open AD Kit initiative, leveraging UXL’s open SYCL Standard and versatile oneAPI specification. This collaboration is an excellent example of how to build a collaborative, hardware-agnostic and open autonomous driving software stack, requiring a wide range of automotive compute accelerators by achieving vendor-neutrality and maximizing reusability,” said Christian John, Chair of the Strategic Planning Committee at the Autoware Foundation and President of North America, TIER IV. “Autoware’s Open AD Kit project continues to be a prominent platform for developing and demonstrating SDV workloads by streamlining the process of architecting autonomous driving software solutions and providing a medium to build consensus.”

“The UXL Foundation is pleased to collaborate with the Autoware Foundation to bring portable software development to the automotive industry by combining libraries based on the oneAPI Specification and the SYCL Standard.  New vehicles will likely have diverse accelerators such as CPUs, GPUs, and AI processors, and the ability to develop using open standards software is key.” said Rod Burns, chair of the UXL Foundation Steering Committee.

The Autoware Foundation is a non-profit organization that hosts the Autoware project, the world’s leading open-source software project for autonomous driving. The Autoware project is built on Robot Operating System (ROS), and through using open source, it lowers the entry barrier to autonomous driving technology and enables commercial deployment of autonomous driving in a broad range of vehicles and applications. Autoware democratizes autonomous driving technology through open-source development and is committed to creating synergies among the world’s leading technology companies, academic/non-profit organizations, and individual contributors.

The Unified Acceleration Foundation is enabling solutions that are productive, performant, and provide customers with the freedom to choose the hardware that best fits their unique needs. To learn more about the Unified Acceleration Foundation, including how to get involved as a developer or member, visit UXLFoundation.org.

Useful Links

https://autoware.org/

https://uxlfoundation.org

https://www.oneapi.io

https://www.arm.com/markets/automotive

https://www.imaginationtech.com/products/automotive

https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/automotive/overview.html

https://www.qualcomm.com/products/automotive/overview

Supporting Quotes

Arm

“Increased autonomy, advanced user experiences, and electrification are all driving a need for more software in the vehicle and emphasizing the importance of software portability and open standards,” said Suraj Gajendra, vice president of products and solutions, Automotive Line of Business, Arm. “This collaboration will bring UXL’s SYCL-based open standard for accelerated compute to the Open AD Kit project, enabling the Autoware Foundation to maximize reuse of its AI investments and demonstrating the value of the SOAFEE community in aligning the industry toward a common goal.”

Imagination Technologies:

“As a leading supplier of GPU IP, we understand the importance of robust, open, hardware-agnostic software stacks and APIs for customers wishing to maximise the long-term potential of their software investment while avoiding vendor lock-in,” said Shreyas Derashri Imagination VP of Compute at Imagination. “The Autoware and UXL Foundation collaboration is a perfect example of how hardware and software vendors can come together to accelerate the high compute perception, localisation and planning workloads that are critical to the future of autonomy.  It is fitting that the oneAPI standard has established a foothold in automotive and is supporting the emergence of truly software-defined vehicles.”

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Red Hat currently supports the Autoware Open AD Kit development and will continue assisting the Autoware Foundation Technical Steering Committee and the Open AD Kit working group in containerizing Autoware software to make it easier to use within SOAFEE-compatible operating environments.

Red Hat brings decades of experience in highly successful enterprise open source software, with specific expertise in containers and virtualization, CI/CD pipelines, DevOps, and cloud-based software development. Red Hat is also a leader in SOAFEE, Eclipse SDV, and functional safety systems through ELISA and ISO.

Red Hat and the Autoware Foundation collaborated on the Open AD Kit demo work at CES 2024 and continue developing it further.

We welcome Red Hat to the Autoware Foundation and are excited to work with them.

About the Autoware Foundation

The Autoware Foundation is a non-profit organization that hosts the Autoware project, the world’s leading open source software project for autonomous driving. The Autoware project is built on Robot Operating System (ROS), and through using open source, it lowers the entry barrier to autonomous driving technology and enables commercial deployment of autonomous driving in a broad range of vehicles and applications.

Autoware democratizes autonomous driving technology through open source development and is committed to creating synergies among the world’s leading technology companies, academic/non-profit organizations, and individual contributors.

—

* Red Hat is a registered trademark of Red Hat, Inc. or its subsidiaries in the U.S. and other countries.

For press inquiries: auto@autoware.org

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The collaboration between the IAC and the Autoware Foundation has already borne fruit in the form of the SIM Races, an AI driver competition utilizing the integrated AV-21 dynamics and the Autoware Foundation’s open-source simulation platform, AWSIM. The results of this competition, showcasing the ingenuity and dedication of participating students, were presented at IAC’s booth at CES 2024.

“The IAC has pledged to become a member of the Autoware Foundation after last year’s successful SIM Races challenge, which we want to repeat this year with a more comprehensive scope,” stated Samet Kütük, Board Member at the Autoware Foundation. “The open-source nature of the Autoware project makes this partnership so impactful,” Kütük explains. “It ensures that our collaborative efforts with the Indy Autonomous Challenge are genuinely accessible to anyone, anywhere. We are not just hosting a competition but cultivating a global community of innovators and problem-solvers.”

Paul Mitchell, CEO of the Indy Autonomous Challenge, underscores the essence of this collaboration. “Our partnership with the Autoware Foundation is a cornerstone in our mission to open up the world of autonomous mobility to students globally,” he states. “By leveraging Autoware’s open-source platform, we provide an unparalleled opportunity for hands-on learning and development. AV-21 vehicle dynamics in the open-source AWSIM simulator is just one aspect; the real story is about breaking down barriers and empowering talent from all corners of the world.”

As 2024 unfolds, the IAC and the Autoware Foundation are enthusiastic about continuing their collaboration.

“Autoware Foundation’s years of experience in developing open-source autonomous vehicle technology, including open-source simulation and our global network of 35+ universities and educational institutions worldwide, poses a unique opportunity to empower tomorrow’s engineers, not only via university programs but also via STEM programs,” stated Samet Kütük. “We have a great reach to the broader AV landscape through alliances and ongoing partnerships with like-minded organizations, such as the IAC and F1Tenth Foundation, that enables us to facilitate the autonomous vehicle innovators of the future generation.”

Paul Mitchell also highlighted the future prospects of this partnership: “This partnership is about democratizing the field of autonomous systems, making it possible for students from diverse backgrounds to contribute to and lead to the future of mobility. Together with the Autoware Foundation, we are setting a precedent for accessibility and innovation in the world of autonomous mobility. Our joint efforts will build a bridge that connects academic theory with real-world application, nurturing a generation of engineers who are not just job-ready but pioneers of future robotics technologies.”

With the Autoware Foundation, we are an example for the future: open accessibility and democratization of innovation in the field of autonomous mobility. This is where our combined contributions are going to work toward building a bridge between academic theory and how it is applied in the real world. This will frame a generation of engineers not job-ready but pioneers of future technologies. This partnership aims to democratize the field of autonomous systems, where students from all walks of life can come and be able to contribute and lead the mobility revolution.

About the Autoware Foundation

The Autoware Foundation is a non-profit organization that hosts the Autoware project, the world’s leading open-source software project for autonomous driving. The Autoware project is built on Robot Operating System (ROS), and through using open source, it lowers the entry barrier to autonomous driving technology and enables commercial deployment of autonomous driving in a broad range of vehicles and applications.

Autoware democratizes autonomous driving technology through open-source development and is committed to creating synergies among the world’s leading technology companies, academic/non-profit organizations and individual contributors.

For press inquiries
auto@autoware.org

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Several industry leaders, including the Autoware Foundation and Autoware Foundation member companies, have collaborated with Arm on the launch of a suite of new virtual platforms and software solutions based on the latest Arm® Automotive Enhanced (AE) technologies, announced today. These are aimed at addressing the growing need to shorten hardware and software development cycles in the age of the Software-Defined Vehicle (SDV).

Arm is a premium member of the Autoware Foundation and a consistent contributor to the Autoware project, particularly to the Open AD Kit. Open AD Kit is a project that aims to make the Autoware project compatible with the software-defined vehicle architectures, including the SOAFEE architecture.

As a part of today’s launch, a mixed-criticality concept will be introduced to Open AD Kit by deploying Autoware’s containerized control feature on safety-critical (RTOS) environments. The concept runs the main Autoware compute functions on an Arm application processor which communicates with the vehicle control functions that run on an Arm real-time processor. These functions can run on both virtual and physical hardware.

This extended partnership is built upon the successful CES 2024 Open AD Kit demonstration in collaboration between the Autoware Foundation, eSync Alliance and SOAFEE, and participated by Arm, AWS, Excelfore, Leo Drive, RedHat and TIER IV. Presented during the CES 2024, at the AWS booth, TIER IV booth and the COVESA event adjacent to CES 2024, the Open AD Kit demo showcased containerized planning-related Autoware workloads working on the cloud and at the edge.

In the future, extending this effort into virtual hardware utilization will harness the advantages of cloud-native development and will pave the way for a shift-left revolution. The shift-left revolution will unlock access for future IPs even before the silicon is made available. Autoware Foundation is working with Arm to bring these new technologies into the Autoware project.

“Our continued collaboration with Arm aims to allow the SDV ecosystem to demonstrate their SDV solutions on the Open AD Kit, using it as a reference software platform. We have good momentum and are actively pursuing new partners to introduce their SDV technologies into the Open AD Kit project,” said Samet Kütük, Board Member and Executive Director at the Autoware Foundation.

“The proliferation of AI in automotive and the exponential increase in software needs of modern vehicles means we have to rethink product development for automakers to remain competitive,” said Suraj Gajendra, vice president of products and solutions, Automotive Line of Business, Arm. “Collaborating with industry leaders like the Autoware Foundation on new virtual platforms and software solutions built on leading-edge automotive hardware from Arm will ensure our partners can keep pace with the growing demands of software-defined vehicles.”

About the Autoware Foundation

The Autoware Foundation is a non-profit organization that hosts the Autoware project, the world’s leading open-source software project for autonomous driving. The Autoware project is built on Robot Operating System (ROS), and through using open source, it lowers the entry barrier to autonomous driving technology and enables commercial deployment of autonomous driving in a broad range of vehicles and applications.

Autoware democratizes autonomous driving technology through open-source development and is committed to creating synergies among the world’s leading technology companies, academic/non-profit organizations and individual contributors.

For press inquiries
auto@autoware.org

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Highlights

• The world’s leading open-source autonomous driving (AD) software provider and AWS commit to working together to showcase cloud-native development best practices that can support the Software Defined Vehicle paradigm that both organizations value.
• Learnings from this engagement between the two organizations will help foster open standards and open source in automotive software, paving the way for value-added differentiation for autonomous applications.
• With a deep engagement in the Autoware Foundation’s Open AD Kit initiative, AWS will be instrumental in helping automotive customers start developing AD solutions by using reference architectures and implementations.

The Autoware Foundation (AWF) is excited to announce that Amazon Web Services (AWS) has joined the foundation. . Today, the two organizations are committing to work more closely to bring autonomous driving software development best practices to help support the broader automotive industry.

“As the world’s leading open-source software project for autonomous driving, the Autoware project poses a unique opportunity to offer a platform for developing real-world autonomous applications using modern software development methodologies and techniques, including cloud-native paradigms and streamlined software delivery in a collaborative environment built on open standards,” said Shinpei Kato, Chairman of the Autoware Foundation.

The Autoware Foundation brings together more than 70 industry members and more than 20 universities and research institutions around the globe to collaboratively develop autonomous driving solutions for a wide variety of use cases, targeting real-world deployments.

To help democratize autonomous driving software development for the industry and research, AWS and the Autoware Foundation are working together to provide demos and hands-on sessions to educate and empower industry professionals and researchers. For instance, the Autoware Foundation’s Centers of Excellence initiative that brings together universities and research institutions in three continents to develop Autoware-based solutions, leveraging state-of-the-art research at academia to bring the deep technological insights and know-how back into the Autoware project for the entire industry to capitalize. AWS will support the Autoware Foundation to help enable Autoware Centers of Excellence to nurture young talent to be proficient with the latest software innovations by providing cloud credits and a t, in addition to easily accessible resources and education through hands-on sessions and hackathons.  The resulting projects can then be translated into industrial innovations, large-scale AI/ML models, and simulations, and ultimately help the entire automotive industry to develop autonomous driving solutions at scale.  Collectively, this approach will speed up time-to-market, helping automakers deliver on the prospect of the Software Defined Vehicle.

“AWS is committed to supporting open source projects and foundations that help scale automotive innovation by making the technology accessible to every organization,” said Wendy Bauer, Vice President and General Manager of Automotive and Manufacturing at AWS. “Autoware’s extensive work in this space combined with AWS’s broad selection of purpose-built tools will help empower the next generation of developers to truly impact change in their industry.”

About The Autoware Foundation

The Autoware Foundation is a non-profit organization that hosts the Autoware project, the world’s leading open source software project for autonomous driving. The Autoware project is built on Robot Operating System (ROS), and through using open source lowers the entry barrier to autonomous driving technology and enables commercial deployment of autonomous driving in a broad range of vehicles and applications.

Autoware democratizes autonomous driving technology through open source development and is committed to creating synergies among the world’s leading technology companies, academic/non-profit organizations and individual contributors.

For press inquiries: auto@autoware.org

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Outline of the event

Date / Venue:

QUALIFYNG April 12th (Tue) – May 13th (Fri) Online FINAL June 26 (Sun) at Institute of Industrial Science, University of Tokyo Large-scale experimental advanced analysis promotion platform Competition:

QUALIFYNG Online training and driving simulation in cloud GPU environment

FINAL Run through the scenario set in the course by the Autonomous Driving slow-speed mobility ran by Autoware. Participants develop software based on Autoware so that they can complete the scenario

Organizer: JSAE Backing: Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, Institute of Industrial Science, University of Tokyo, Mobility Innovation Collaboration Research Organization, University of Tokyo, Japan Automobile Manufacturers Association Eligibility: Open to public. Participation fee is free Award items: 3 awards (highest award, excellent award and 3rd place prize) and supplementary awards are being adjusted by JSAE

JSAE will provide a place for engineers, researchers, students, etc. involved in computer science, AI, software and information processing to take on challenges and learning opportunities, such as competitions that run through scenarios on the course by Autonomous driving Green Small Mobility.

Please see the following for details. https://www.jsae.or.jp/jaaic/en/index.html

Contact:

Secretariat, Japan Automotive AI Challenge, JSAE ai-challenge@jsae.or.jp

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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!

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The Autoware Foundation

October 15th 2021

TOKYO, October 15, 2021 – The Autoware Foundation, a non-profit organization created to initiate, grow, and fund open-source collaborative engineering Autoware projects, today announced the launch of the Open AD Kit. This new project will provide a reference starter kit allowing autonomous developers to use cloud-native paradigms for the development and deployment of autonomous applications.

With development and testing cycles for autonomous driving systems accelerating, new approaches are needed to enable rapid development and deployment of increasingly complex software workloads. The Open AD kit provides both a development software stack to run in the vehicle, and a DevOps mechanism similar to what is used in cloud development today. Developers can now make use of features such as Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery (CI/CD), which enables rapid development in the cloud and ease of deployment to the vehicle.

The Open AD kit is based on Arm’s recently announced Scalable Open Architecture For the Embedded Edge (SOAFEE) initiative, which brings the real-time and safety needs of automotive together with the advantages of a cloud-native approach, using Autoware.auto as the reference workload for autonomous driving applications. The Open AD kit will run both natively in cloud instances on the AD development platform provided by Tier IV, and on reference hardware platforms provided by ADLINK Technology and Autocore.

Key technologies from the SOAFEE architecture that provide some of the baseline capabilities of the Open AD kit include containers, allowing for workloads to be easily developed in the cloud and then deployed as microservices to the vehicle, and an orchestration service that enables that deployment from cloud to vehicle.

The first version of the Open AD kit will be available here before the end of 2021, and as the project matures it will allow for both commercial and open-source workloads to be made easily available to developers. Key contributors to the initial Open AD kit release include Tier IV, Autocore, Arm, and ADLINK, supported by various working groups in the Autoware Foundation. These companies will be providing their expertise and technologies to bring the Autoware.auto autonomous driving solution into both cloud and vehicle environments, providing a seamless autonomous development and deployment environment.

“The Open AD kit has been a truly collaborative initiative to introduce a reference implementation that can be used immediately by developers of autonomous vehicles,” said Shinpei Kato, Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Autoware Foundation.

“The Open AD kit is critical to helping accelerate the development of autonomous systems. By bringing a cloud-native experience to developers , it will be much easier to manage the frequent workload optimizations needed for a successful deployment ,” said Yang Zhang, Board of Directors of the Autoware Foundation.

“The future of automotive is software defined, and no more so than with autonomous drive systems. Being able to develop mixed critical automotive applications from cloud to automotive edge is a critical aspect that Open AD Kit intends to deliver” said Girish Shirasat, Board of Directors of the Autoware Foundation.

“The cloud-native development, verification and deployment to edge hardware platforms enabled by Open AD kit will significantly reduce the investment and time to market of autonomous systems,” said Jim Liu, Board of Directors of the Autoware Foundation.

For more information on the Open AD kit project, Shinpei Kato and Girish Shirasat have a paper at Arm Dev Summit, taking place on October 19-21st 2021. See here for more details. Industry players looking to participate in the Open AD Kit or get involved in Autoware can email auto@autoware.org or visit https://autoware.org/.

ENDS

About Autoware Autoware is the world’s first “all-in-one” open-source software for self-driving vehicles hosted under the Autoware Foundation. Autoware.Auto is a next generation of Autoware based on ROS 2, with contributions from the Autoware Foundation members and community at large following best-in-class software engineering practices.

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