Technical Steering Committee (TSC) Meeting #39 (2022/02/17) Minutes

Autoware
1

2022/02/17 15:00 UTC

Attendees

  • Ryohsuke Mitsudome (TSC Chair)
  • Shinpei Kato (AWF)
  • Yang Zhang (AWF)
  • Daisuke Tanaka (AWF)
  • Christian John (SPC)
  • Larry Dimitrievski (SPC)
  • M. Fatih Cırıt (AWF)
  • Xinyu Wang (AWF)
  • Bonolo Mathibela (AWF)
  • Armağan Arslan (HW WG)
  • Hiroshi Igata (ODD WG)
  • David Walmroth (Open AD Kit WG)
  • Wojciech Jaworski (Simulation WG)
  • Kerem Par (Adastec)
  • Filipe Rinaldi (Arm)
  • Stephen Li (Autocore）
  • David Van Guyen (AutonomouStuff)
  • Jilada Eccleston (Tier IV)
  • Jaime Martin Losa (eProsima)
  • Akihiko Tsukuda (eSOL)
  • Rahul Mangharam (F1 Tenth Foundation)
  • Michael Li (ITRI)
  • Adam Dabrowski (Robotec.ai)
  • Mert Colak (LeoDrive)

Minutes:

Action items

Board Passdowns (5min)

HighLights:

  • SPC:

    • Autoware Center of Excellence (explained later)
    • AWF website update requires further focus with wording/links to make effective use of Autoware.IO
    • Discussed proposal to hire part Marketing resource

  • Operation Committee

    • Accepted eveAutonomy as Industry based on contributions to Cargo ODD demo
    • UPower renewing at Industry level with desire for future upgrade to Premium via FTE
    • Marvel joining at Premium

Confirmation of previous minutes

Action items review

Working group report: Autonomy Software (10 min)

Discussion

  • What’s the plan after Cargo ODD?
    • We will move to Bus ODD
  • Yang: LeoDrive shared a summarized documentation on ODD in hardware work group
    • This should be published in public.
    • LeoDrive to finalize the document and posted as blog post on autoware website

Working group report: Operational Design Domain (10 min)

  • Compared the use cases of ITRI’s and Tier IV’s bus service and identified the basic use cases are pretty much common. As a first step, start with the Tier IV based use cases which are more detailed parameterized, and continue parallele discussion regarding major differences including;
    • Traffic signal perception (ITRI is using 4G wireless)
    • Sensor configuration (ITRI is using cameras and radars in addition to LiDARs)
  • ITRI is investigating how it can share additional information including HD map (point cloud and lanelet2) data and its detailed hardware configuration. The former is about clarifying the procedure of map dsta s
  • Tier IV shared the information of desired development process based on the systems engineering perspective, e.g. ConOps and OpsCon.
  • As the integration of Scenario Testing Framework and Autoware universe is still unstable, Mitsudome-san kindly provided the bridge-solution so that the working group members can start creating/previewing the initial set of the machine readable scenarios.
  • Assigning the use cases to the volunteer working group members this week.

Discussion:

  • We need a better way to share information from ITRI to other WG as well.

Working group report: Hardware (10 min)

The meeting minutes are here: Autonomy hardware working group · Wiki · Autoware Foundation / Autoware Foundation · GitLab

  • Bus ODD hardware architecture work is started but still waiting information from Huei-Ru ITRI
  • Computing & Sensor architecture information is collected through ODD working group
  • The new architectures design is extended and new designs will have power, ip configurations & drive by wire system etc.
  • The invitation to members completed and some of them joined the last meeting.
  • A new member Robeff (specialized in dbw) is joining the meetings
  • Starting from the next meeting we will start sensor & system manufacturer presentations to be published online at AWF youtube.
  • Autoware CoE buffalo university project discussions and architecture is finalized
  • The documentation is moved from Leodrive to AWF google drive folder and the links will be changed soon
  • Some modifications on the supported hardware list is made about the current status and driver information

Discussion:

  • David: Do we have access to Autocore PCU?
    • Stephen: Autocore is internally discussing if they can provide
      → This has been approved. Further information can be shared HW WG.
  • Shinpei: What is the scope of HW WG?
  • Do we have anyone from ADLINK to replace Joe Speed?
    • Fillipo cannot replace the position.
    • We need someone looking into AVA platform
      • We might have someone from OpenADKit WG who has knowledge about AVA Platform
      • They would like to know if there are others who are using the platform.
      • Ryohsuke to contact ADLINK separately as well.

Working group report: Simulation (10 min)

Discussion:

  • What is the timeline of selecting the next simulation platform? Should it be decided in Simulation WG?
    • We don’t have strict timeline, but we should have final decision made in TSC.
    • Perhaps we can prepare a presentation by the next call to have a vote.
  • Carla uses Unreal engine. Is it easy to transition from Unity based simulation?
    • Simulation engine alone shouldn’t be a reason to decline the possibility. We should have fair comparison based on different aspects.
      • Is it open source?
      • Support of the maps?
  • Is MORAI open source?
    • We don’t have information yet

Working group report: Racing (10 min)

Autoware + Racing 2021:

  • Creating currently a write-up about all the efforts that happened 2021
  • Will be in big presentation format → Maybe making a video out of it, too?
    • Planned to be shared in ICRA + blog post in autoware website

Autoware on F1TENTH HW

  • F1TENTH branch merged succesfully
  • Current developer branch: https://gitlab.com/autowarefoundation/autoware.auto/AutowareAuto/-/tree/f1tenth-devel-jetson
  • F1TENTH vehicle is driving successfully with Autoware.Auto - but slowly in the office
  • Mitsudome is writing an instruction for using the develop-branch
  • Haoru was testing the instruction in the SVL Simulator
  • Haoru needs to test the instruction on the real car, support from Mitsudome
  • The F1TENTH vehicle (hardware) is staying in Japan at Tier.IV to help out if there are any issues in the development cycle

F1TENTH Training for Unviersity:

  • PUT is setting up an Autoware based course this semester

Planning for Upcoming Events:

EVGrandPrix Autonomous Race (May 19-20)

  • Planning to build/setup gokart at Autoware CoE
  • Autoware can run on these Go-Karts and students work with it

ICRA 2022 F1TENTH Race (May 23-27)

  • Virtual race will be conducted on existing F1TENTH simulation
  • Should still be able to interface with Autoware
  • Requirements for competing are defined on the race website https://icra2022-race.f1tenth.org
  • Sponsorship opportunity for AWF and members (to be discussed in SPC next week)

ICRA 2022 Racing Workshop (May 23-27, tbd which day)

  • 9 speakers presenting on autonomous racing topics
  • Open for short presentations by students on paper submissions
  • Hybrid in person and online
  • WG participants should be able to join (Johannes coordinating)
  • https://icra2022.f1tenth.org/

IV22 Autoware Workshop (Germany, June)

  • Proposal was submitted by Alex
  • Working to finalize details of workshop agenda/topics
  • Schedule WG call with Alex to discuss plans related to racing (e.g. virtual race event)

Working group report: Open AD Kit (10 min)

  • Increase in AWF members attending OADKit WG including MIH, Marvell, Morai.ai.

  • ITRI and Bus ODD as first reference implementation CI/CD pipeline, Scenario Editor and tools.

  • All WGs now represented in at least one of the three revolving OAD Kit meetings.

  • ITRI HW environment will be Neousys for initial tests. AVA Kit available on secondary bus as functional safety, AP1 (updated in-vehicle system), etc. evolve. Q2/Q3 for AP1 availability(*).

  • Containerization planning and activity continue with the goal of completion in Q2/Q3(*).

  • Continuing examination and evolution of documentation scope and standards (e.g. OpsCon/ConOps from Tanzawa-san, presentations from Hashimoto-san, Fujii-san, Kasper, and others).

  • Ongoing efforts and openness to potential additional reference implementations or opportunities to leverage OAD Kit toolchain components (e.g. CoE, Buffalo, etc.).

  • Attempting to identify/convey value proposition opportunities to members that may be interested in upping their brand or product visibility via participation. E.g. PIX Moving (chassis), ADASTEC (know-how transfer, bus ODD experience in Lansing, sensor/compute info exchange, impression on utility of Open ADKit tooling), Morai.ai (sim manf) has become an active member and perhaps a consideration for simulation integration.

  • Updating procedures for minutes, scheduling, communications, and documentation repositories to align with other WGs and AWF tracking. Lalith has been tremendously useful in his increased role for supporting OAD Kit admin, communications, and providing an active link to Japan/Asia.

  • IV2022. Discussing Autoware on 1:5 scale Kvaser K-Car dev kit (using CAN) chassis for Aachen. Investigating sending K-Car devkit to Nagoya University and/or Poznan Politech in Poland.

  • Openned call for co-chair nominations. Will provide nominations and/or options to TSC for ratification.

Discussion

  • Fatih: I propose to merge OAD Kit WG with Hardware WG.
    • Open AD Kit currently relates to hardware design.
    • Armagan and David can have a separate call and bring back the proposal in the next TSC Call.

Autoware Architect Meeting report (TSC Chair)

Discussion:

Updates on CoE (CJ)

TSC Update Autoware CoE 021622 (1).pdf (1.5 MB)

Discussion

  • How is the communication made between CoE and TSC workgroups?
    • Key members(Armagan, Bonolo, David) from relevant workgroups are already involved. Rahul will also participate to the work group meetings to do the sync.
  • Armagan: we would like to share the roadmap of the feature up to 2025 in the autoware roadmap webpage. https://www.autoware.org/autoware

ConOps/OpsCon for Bus ODD (Tier IV)

Discussion:

  • Larry: we would like to have Tanazawa-san to share this in SPC as well.

Transition from Slack to Discord (Fatih)