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 heterogeneous platform support based on 96Boards products, vehicle control interfaces as well as a collection of third-party software and hardware 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.

Founding Premium Members include Apex.AI, Arm, AutoCore, AutonomouStuff, Huawei, Kalray, Linaro 96Boards, LG, Parkopedia, StreetDrone, Tier IV and Velodyne. The Premium Members are supported by founding Industrial and Academic & Non-Profit Members including eSOL, Intel, Nagoya University, OSRF (Open Source Robotics Foundation), RoboSense, Semi Japan, SiFive, TRI-AD (Toyota Research Institute Advanced Development, Inc), and Xilinx.

“As we work towards the mass deployment of safe, fully autonomous vehicles, we need to ensure that automotive players have the ability to influence technical direction and implement platform support for their solutions,” said Mark Hambleton, vice president open source software, Arm. “This partnership will allow the Autoware ecosystem to further collaborate on certifiable software stacks for secure, safe, and efficient next-generation vehicles.”