Technical Steering Committee (TSC) Meeting #10 Minutes

Autoware
1

September 18, 2019, 22:00 UTC

Attendees

  • Lee Baldwin (AutonomousStuff)
  • Geoffrey Biggs (Tier IV)
  • Esteve Fernandez (Apex.AI)
  • Kenji Funaoka (Tier IV)
  • Brian Holt (Parkopedia)
  • Seonman Kim (LGE)
  • Dejan Pangercic (Apex.AI)
  • Koga
  • Nikos Michalakis (TRI-AD)
  • Otake (Macnica)
  • Stephane Strahm (Kalray)
  • Akihiko Tsukuda (eSOL)
  • Joshua Whitley (AutonomousStuff)
  • Dmitry Zelnkovskiy (LGE)

Minutes Geoffrey Biggs (Tier IV)

Agenda

  1. Opening remarks and new member introductions
  2. Admin Confirmation of previous minutes
  3. Follow-up Action items from previous meeting
  4. Follow-up New logos for the Autoware Foundation and its projects
  5. Follow-up Hiring a software architect
  6. Admin Review TSC members list on the AWF website
  7. Working group report Autoware
  8. Working group report Map formats
  9. Working group report Vehicle interfaces
  10. Working group report ECU/Platform
  11. Working group report Simulation
  12. Admin Working groups participation levels

Action items

Detailed minutes

Opening remarks and new member introductions (Board)

  • No board members present.

Confirmation of previous minutes (All)

  • Minutes approved.

Action items from previous meeting (All)

  • Release the safety case example
    • @Brian_Holt
    • Action taken The partner has added a legal notice which makes them happy to release it, but they used a non-standard language which means anyone who wants to use it may need to get it checked out by a lawyer. Brian is proposing to add CC-BY-SA 4.0 as the license and include their disclaimer of warranty and limitation of liabilities.
    • The AWF should make a fuss about releasing them because they are a big potential impact.
    • Will discuss offline where to host the examples.
  • Post the Autoware software architect recruitment notice to any useful forums
    • AWF board
    • Action taken Unknown.
  • Create working group wiki pages

New logos for the Autoware Foundation and its projects

Hiring a software architect

Names and photos of TSC members for the AWF website

  • The list of TSC members on the foundation website is out of date.
  • If you are not listed, please send your photo and name so we can get you listed.
  • Only the primary TSC representative should be listed

Working group report: Autoware (@gbiggs, @esteve)

  • Reminder: The dates for the next release of Autoware.AI have been set by the maintainer team.
  • Changes have been made to the governance of the Autoware.IO and Autoware.Auto projects
  • Autoware.AI updates:
    • A significant set of new features are being proposed by engineers from Tier IV, including the ability to drive in reverse.
    • Some basic safety features are being added to handle the event of NDT matching losing its place. The new features are use of an EKF to detect when the NDT result makes a large jump, and a paramterised limit on the maximum steering angle.
    • The submission deadline for MRs is 12 days away.
  • Autoware.Auto updates:
    • Progress has been slow but is steadily moving forward.
      1. Objection detection is done
      2. Lidar-based localization super spec’d out https://gitlab.com/autowarefoundation/autoware.auto/autoware/issues/1
      3. Maps working group very active and we have a map of AS parking lot
      4. VI interface in Josh’s hands - he will get that done for Lexus vehicle at least
      5. Path planning and controls - TierIV will get this done
      6. Simulation - AS parking lot is in LGSVL
      7. Platform group is also very active and if not there is always https://autonomoustuff.com/product/astuff-spectra/
    • IMU and GPS drivers will be landing in a few days. These are specific to the xsense NTIG-601 sensor.
    • Tier IV has done work to get the ros1_bridge in place and allow parts of Autoware.AI to be used from Autoware.Auto. Currently this work is focusing on enabling the localisation stack from Autoware.AI to be used.
    • Epics for the first milestone have not seen much tracking, except for the localisation epic being handled by Christopher Ho from Apex.AI.
    • Apex.AI proposes that we hold an all-hands-on-deck integration hackathon in the Bay Area in early 2020 (some time by the end of March).
      • There is interest in attending: Parkopedia will definitely attend and bring two or three people. AS will do their best to attend. Kalray thinks they can send someone. Nikos may be able to send someone.
      • The idea is to host it at the Apex.AI and use the AutonomousStuff carpark which is not that far away.
      • We still need a vector map of the AS carpark.
      • Parkopedia has achieved the first couple of milestones in Autoware.AI and intends to port this all to Autoware.Auto in their upcoming hackathon in the UK.
      • Parkopedia wants the goal of the integration hackathon to be to flesh out all the remaining little bits of the AVP use case (using artifical landmarks, the application-level, etc.).

Working group report: Map formats (@Brian_Holt)

Working group report: Vehicle interfaces (@JWhitleyWork)

  • In our last meeting, I was asked to create a survey to send to members of the group about their needs for the Autoware Vehicle Interface layers. I created and distributed the survey but received no responses in the 4 weeks between meetings. In addition, the last meeting was attended by only @gbiggs and myself. After a brief discussion, @gbiggs and I decided that I would distribute the survey to the entire Autoware community. We will discuss how to raise participation in this (and I believe several other) working groups during the TSC call.
  • Survey topic: Vehicle Interface Community Survey

Working group report: Reference Platform (@sstrahm, @cheng.chen)

  • WG has not been very active in terms of communication and has not managed to hold a meeting since the last TSC.
  • Implementation of the Autocore/Kalray reference board BSP is on-going.

Discussion

  • Apex.AI: How is provisioning/deployment done? We want to avoid duplicating how this is done with ROS 2, commercial companies, etc.

Working group report: Simulation (@bshin-lge)

  • A meeting has been held where they compared Metamoto’s features and LGSVL’s features.
  • They hope to have content creation discussions in the next meeting.

Working groups participation levels

  • Several working groups do not have much participation and activity.
    • Notably, Autoware WG, Reference Platform WG, Vehicle Interfaces WG, Simulation WG
  • It is probable that some topics have been split off too early, before there is a critical mass of participants and contributors to power the discussion and work.
  • Proposal to improve this is to drop some working groups and roll their topics into one of the two core working groups (Autoware WG and Reference Platform WG).
    • Vehicle interfaces WG is most likely candidate for this - move its topics to the Autoware WG.
    • Simulators working group probably should be, too - move its topics to the Autoware WG.
  • Reference platform WG will not be removed.
  • When we start having too much discussion to fit in the Autoware WG meeting, we can split off a WG appropriate to the overflow topics.

Discussion

  • AS agrees with cutting down the number of workin groups, particularly as it will overwhelm people when they see calls for so many working groups.
  • Kalray also agrees.
  • Working group activities centre: Home · Wiki · Autoware Foundation / Autoware Foundation · GitLab
  • Shared calendar for working groups: Autoware Foundation events schedule
  • Please subscribe to the Autoware and Autoware-TSC categories on Discourse, because all discussion for the AWF’s technical activities happens there now.
  • Milestones: https://gitlab.com/autowarefoundation/autoware.auto/autoware/issues
  • All TSC representatives need to take responsibility for driving participation in AWF development activities.
  • All FTEs need to be proactive about doing work, rather than waiting for specific instructions. Pick a task from the milestones list and start doing it, and pick a working group and start participating.