This startup built the first open-source driverless car

The automotive industry is closed and proprietary.

But Shinpei Kato, founder and CTO of Tier IV, thinks they are going to be forced to change. Teir IV has brought together a global community of programmers and corporate partners to create the Autoware project.

Tier IV's goal to develop a completely open-source software platform to drive autonomous vehicles is ambitious, and they have already completed some of the most advanced road-tests of driverless cars in Japan.

Today we explore the business bottlenecks in rolling out autonomous vehicles, why open-source makes the automotive industry nervous, and why the first successful driverless car won't be what you think it will.

It's a great conversation, and I think you'll enjoy it.

Show Notes

Introducing Autoware and Tier IV What keeps the auto industry from adopting open source The only way a college professor can actually run a startup The challenges in building an industrial open source community How to road test driverless cars in Japan Japan’s first fully-autonomous taxi service When we will see driverless taxies as part of our everyday life The bottleneck that keeps robot-taxis from going mainstream Which autonomous vehicles we are going to see first. Tier IV's business model How open-source might be Japan's secret weapon in global AI

Links from the Founder

Everything you ever wanted to know about Tier IV

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Check out Shinpei's personal home page

Friend him on Facebook Follow him on Twitter @ShinpeiKato Connect with him on LinkedIn

Learn about the Autoware Foundation The Tier IV safety report

Some other media coverage of Tier IV

Forbes The Japan Times Valuer

Leave a comment Transcript Welcome to Disrupting Japan, straight talk from Japan's most successful entrepreneurs. I'm Tim Romero and thanks for joining me. Open-source software has completely changed how we think about operating systems, networking, and databases. The whole Internet basically runs on open-source software, but can a 100% open-source software power an autonomous car? Well, one Japanese founder not only thinks it can, but he's betting his company on it, and that startup has already conducted some of the most advanced road tests in Japan. Today, we sit down with Shinpei Kato, founder of autonomous driving startup Tier IV, and Shinpei is also the chairman of the Autoware Foundation, Autoware, being the open-source project to develop software for fully autonomous vehicles. With so much driverless car news coming out of the US, you might not know about what's happening in Japan, but it's pretty amazing. We talk about what's involved in road testing driverless cars in Japan some frightening things people are doing to their cars, the challenges of building an open-source platform in an industry that has historically been fiercely secretive and proprietary and why Japan's first driverless cars are not going to look anything like what you think they will. But you know, Shinpei tells that story much better than I can, so let's get right to the interview.

Interview So I'm sitting here with Shinpei Kato of Tier IV who is developing an autonomous driving software, so thanks so much for sitting down with us. Shinpei: Thank you very much for inviting me to this fantastic show. Tim: Oh, it's our pleasure. Listen, before we get into the details, can you explain the relationship between Tier IV and Autoware, because the two different entities are really closely connected and like, together, they form Tier IV's business strategy. Shinpei: So I used to be at Nagoya University and I had led a project of autonomous driving where we started developing software for autonomous vehicles, so I had a lot of attention from industries that made me decide I should do startup rather than the university research. Tier IV was founded to facilitate RND of this open-source software called Autoware. Two years later, it became much more which made me decide founding Autoware community rather than using Tier IV as just one Japanese startup. The Autoware community can be composed of worldwide industry and academia, Tier IV handed over Autoware to the community. Tim: So Tier IV is started before Autoware? Shinpei: When you say Autoware, it means one is Autoware as a software project which started before Tier IV, but when you say Autoware, it can also mean Autoware Foundation as a community. This Autoware Foundation was founded after Tier IV was founded. Tim: So my understanding is that Autoware is a complete open-source platform for autonomous vehicles, but how do I put it? That's an incredibly complex set of technologies, so is Autoware really, is it a complete platform now or how much does it actually do? Shinpei: When you consider the building blocks of autonomous vehicles, it's huge, yes, as you mentioned, it's complex. Autoware stands for open-source software. I would say it's a small piece but still, it's just a piece of building blocks, so what I wanted to do was to publish Autoware as a basic platform on top of which other commercial building blocks can build. You need hardware, you need cloud, there are many, many other pieces in the building blocks, but Autoware can underlie these building blocks. Tim: Wow, the automotive industry from the very beginning has been this extremely proprietary and closed set of technologies. I mean, it's always run that way, so what has been the reaction of the auto makers to the idea of building on top of an open-source platform? Shinpei: I think that there are several points of view but in general, open-source software must be useful for the automotive industry whether they use it or not for the commercial products because when you have open-source software, you would have your people educated using autonomous software or your broad-type RND systems can also use this open-source software. Now, it's up to you if you want to keep using this open-source software for your commercial products, or of course, you can switch. Tim: Okay, that makes sense. Listen, before we dive into the business side of things, I want to back up and talk for a minute about you. So you mentioned before, this started originally when you were an associate professor at Nagoya University, and so far, your career has been entirely in academia, at Nagoya University, University of Tokyo, so are you still involved with academia? Do you kind of balance between running a startup and being an assistant professor now? Shinpei: I'm still deeply involved in academia but I want to make a kind of new career. For me, I don't really see in the past that university professors actually really do the business, I don't know why, but to me, why not? So I could be kind of a pioneer to show professors can actually do the business. Tim: How do you balance your time? Because like, being a startup founder, it's more than a full-time job. Shinpei: Yeah, that's a good question, so Tier IV is deep tech. If Tier IV is not deep tech, I think it was very difficult for me to balance between startup and university, but given that Tier IV is deep tech, what I do in university can actually underlie what we do in a startup. Tim: So your academic research is also really tied into Autoware and Tier IV? Shinpei: Exactly, that's why I love open-source. If you don't use open-source, then you may see some legal problems if you just use your university outcome to your private company, but here, we search outcome from the university can go to open-source, then my startup uses this open-source of their business, that's the strategy. Tim: Yeah, I love the concept of that. I mean, I'm a fan of almost anything that is open-source. The more open and sharing, and collaboration we have in the world, the better. Well, actually, tell me a bit about the Autoware community? Who's supporting and who's building the platform? Shinpei: So Autoware Foundation is three years old. Including Tier IV, more than half of the community, they actually come from startups, but now, we're getting more large companies in the community, but still the core actually startup. Tim: Yeah, I mean, I think, yeah, I mean, large company participation is always a great sign for open-source projects of any kind, but most, like, really successful open-source projects have, oh, you know, this core group of individual-like people who are contributing and the companies kind of form around them, and so are there also, like, individuals that are also contributing to this open-source platform? Shinpei: You're right, the core group of Autoware Foundation, the startup too, wants to jump into the automatic driving market but they believe that they cannot do it by themselves, right? You want to make an alliance with the partner companies in order to compete with or cooperate with automotive makers or big tech giants. They want to build a system not by themselves but by using this alliance, that's the core group of the foundation. Tim: Yeah, well, I mean, it makes sense. It kind of levels that playing field so that small startups can tackle a small piece of the program and together build something great. Shinpei: It's something very large scale. Tim: Yeah, but, so this would be, like, a simple basic question but for open-source software, if you're looking at something like Linux or mySQL or something, developers can install it on their own laptops and play with it, and experiment and see how they like it, but how do you do that with self-driving car technology? How do, like, individual startups and contributors booted up to try it out? Shinpei: In practice, they actually play it on the cars, seriously. They download Autoware and they have their car, make it modified in order to accommodate software stack like bi-wire modification, so if you have a car with bi-wire modification, you can play around the cars, but yes,