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The Autoware Foundation manages several projects related to self-driving vehicles. The most well-known is Autoware.AI, the first generation of the Autoware open-source framework for self-driving vehicles. This has been archived. Autoware.Auto is the next generation of Autoware, built on ROS 2 and following best practices and standards with an eye to being as production-ready as possible for an open-source project. The latest (and recommended) software is the community maintained Autoware.Universe and the more robust Autoware.Core which is currently under active development.
The Autoware Foundation's open-source project structure is based on the technical governance structure of the Apache Foundation.
The Technical Steering Committee, made up of representatives of the premium members of the Autoware Foundation, sets the technical direction for Foundation activities. For the software projects, this generally involves setting technical milestones to be achieved and the order in which to achieve them.
The committers are those who have been selected by the PMC to act as day-to-day maintainers of a project. Committers perform the following tasks.
- They have write access to the project's repository, allowing them to accept and merge Merge Requests (MRs) from contributors and other contributors.
- They determine the roadmap for the project, in terms of what should be in each release, when the release should be made, and what the deadlines are for MR submission, MR acceptance, code freeze, etc.
- They flesh out issues and tasks so that there is a ready supply of tasks for committers and contributors to work on.
The committers for one project are not necessarily committers for another project.
The committers for a project are selected by that project's PMC. Usually the PMC chooses committers based on having shown a high level of commitment to a project through a history of valuable contributions. The exact criteria that a PMC uses to choose committers varies based on the style and needs of each project.
Contributors are anyone else involved in a project. There is no formal process for becoming a contributor. Simply propose a bug fix or file an issue and you are a contributor. Contributors vary greatly in their degree of commitment to a project. While some may be very dedicated, making contributions every day, others may send in one bug fix and never make another contribution, or may contribute by helping others with problems on the ROS Answers site or writing documentation. All types of contributors are equally valuable to our open source projects and we encourage anyone to make any level of contribution they see fit, based on their own skills and available time.
The Autoware website and Autoware Foundation events calendar provides a schedule of upcoming events hosted by the Autoware Foundation.
The calendar is also available in iCal format for import into most calendar tools.
The Autoware Foundation's activities are managed at a low level by several working groups. They guide and contribute to development of the Autoware reference implementation.
There is no formal membership of a working group. If you wish to participate, choose a working group from the list below and join its next meeting.
Each working group has two leaders. The leaders are there to act as facilitators and administrators. They are responsible for organising working group meetings, taking minutes, updating the WG Wiki page, and ensuring that each meeting proceeds smoothly. Working group leaders will not act as dictators. Technical decisions are taken by consensus, not by the leaders making a decision for all.
In general, working groups will work via the GitHub Discussions, Issues and Pull Requests as well as using ROS Discourse or Discord where appropriate.
Working groups can and do hold regular teleconferences as a way to speed up discussions and keep all interested parties up to date on recent activities.
The Work Group Best Practices document outlines a set of recommended best practices for running working groups. An initial overview of Autoware Core/Universe with useful links is available here.
The currently active working groups are:
- Software working group
- Operational Design Domain working group
- Simulation working group
- Racing working group
- Autonomy hardware working group (was merged with the Open AD Kit WG)
- Open AD Kit working group
- Autoware Architecture working group (currently on pause)
- Localisation & Mapping working group (merged with Software WG)
- API working group
- Planning & Control working group (merged with Software WG)
- Sensing & Perception working group (merged with Software WG)
- Reference Design working group
- Safety Assurance working group
- Privately Owned Vehicles working group
Some working groups are currently inactive. While inactive, their subject area is covered by one of the existing working groups. A working group may be reactivated if its topics begin swamping another working group's time. The currently inactive working groups are:
- Maps and routing working group (special-topic working group)
- Vehicle interfaces working group
See this page for a description of the responsibilities of working group leaders.
See the Autoware Foundation events calendar for the schedule of upcoming working group meetings.
In general, anyone is welcome to propose a new working group to the Autoware Foundation's TSC. However, to prevent dividing discussion unnecessarily we prefer not to start a new working group for a topic unless that topic is flooding one of the existing working groups. If you feel that a particular topic needs to be discussed, begin by raising it one of the two core working groups (depending on if it is software- or hardware-related). If the discussion time in that working group's meeting is not enough, then propose to the TSC that a new working group is formed for that topic.
If you propose a working group, it is generally assumed that you will be the leader of that working group. See this page for a description of the responsibilities of working group leaders. A working group must have a minimum of one leader. However, in order to ensure the working group remains active even if a leader becomes temporarily unavailable, we prefer that each working group has at least two leaders. The leader(s) of a working group do not need to be TSC representatives or even Autoware Foundation member employees. We do require, though, that at least one TSC representative is regularly attending the working group meetings in order to provide the activity reports to the TSC.