Tier IV, Inc. announced the launch of the Autoware Foundation, an open alliance for autonomous driving technology jointly initiated by Apex.AI, Inc., Linaro and Tier IV, Inc.
The Autoware Foundation is a non-profit organisation created to initiate, grow, and fund open source collaborative engineering Autoware projects, starting with Autoware.AI, Autoware.Auto, and Autoware.IO. Autoware.AI is the original Autoware project started in 2015 by Shinpei Kato at Nagoya University that is being used globally by more than 100 companies in more than 30 vehicles today. Autoware.Auto is a rewrite of Autoware using ROS 2.0 for certifiable software stacks used in vehicles. Autoware.IO focuses on as many ECUs as possible, heterogeneous architectures, vehicle control interfaces, and a collection of third-party software and tools to help deliver the core values of Autoware. Examples of Autoware.IO projects include simulators, device drivers for sensors, by-wire controllers for vehicles, and hardware-independent programs for SoC boards.
Shinpei Kato from Tier IV and the University of Tokyo, Jan Becker from Apex.AI and Stanford University and Yang Zhang from Linaro/96Boards and the Chinese Academy of Sciences AI Institute have together formed the founding Board of Directors for the Autoware Foundation. The Board is responsible for the operation of the Autoware Foundation, while a Technical Steering Committee is being formed from representatives of the Premium Members to drive the technical direction of the projects. Autoware is based on ROS, with Brian Gerkey, Founder and CEO of Open Robotics (OSRF), as an advisor to the foundation.
Founding Members:
The Autoware Foundation embarks with an impressive set of founding members. Tier IV, Linaro/96Boards and Apex.AI, have welcomed ARM, AutoCore, AutonomouStuff, eSOL, Huawei/HiSilicon, Intel Labs, Kalray, LG Electronics, Nagoya University, Open Robotics (OSRF), Parkopedia, RoboSense, SEMI Japan, SiFive/RISC-V Foundation, StreetDrone, Toyota Research Institute-Advanced Development (TRI-AD), Velodyne LiDAR, and Xilinx to join as founding members.