Toyota and Apex.AI Collaborate to Integrate Apex.OS SDK into Autonomous Vehicle Operating System

According to foreign media reports, automakers turning to pure electric and high-tech vehicles have found that error-free and wirelessly updateable software has become an important factor in attracting customers. This problem has also been a major factor that has plagued the pure electric Volkswagen ID.3, the 2022 Volvo XC40 Recharge and the Ford Mustang Mach-E.

Apex.AI is a startup co-founded by Bosch senior employees, automation system engineers Jan Becker and Dejan Pangercic. The company spent four years rewriting the robot operating system and will provide tools for automakers to enable them to integrate software into vehicles and ensure that all applications run reliably. Recently, Apex.AI has passed safety certification, proving that its software development kit (SDK) is mature enough for mass-produced vehicles. The company has now reached cooperation with Toyota and Japanese technology startup Tier IV.

Toyota Woven Planet is integrating the Apex.OS SDK into its own vehicle development platform Arene. The Apex SDK will handle safety-critical applications, speed up the development of autonomous driving software, and eventually introduce it into mass-produced vehicles. In another recent deal, Tier IV, the original creator of Japanese open source autonomous driving software Autoware, said it would use Apex.AI's software stack in safety-critical autonomous driving systems.

(Image source: Apex.AI)

Becker said in a recent interview: "Over the past year, there has been a trend that has become increasingly clear: in order to beat Tesla, more and more car companies have begun to focus on so-called software-defined cars." Automakers no longer install 100 electronic control units (computers) on the entire vehicle, but only use a few high-performance computers, and all functions are implemented by the software.

This shift means hundreds or even thousands of software developers could be working on a single car. “This is only really possible if all developers are using the same interface, which is what this SDK enables right now,” Becker said. “So by using Apex.OS, a common abstraction layer or SDK is available that can handle all the functions of the vehicle.”

Apex’s toolkit has also attracted attention from private and strategic investors. In 2018, Apex completed a $15.5 million Series A round, and has since received strategic investments from Airbus Ventures, Jaguar Land Rover’s InMotion Ventures, Toyota Motor, and Volvo Group. Becker did not disclose the investment details, but noted that the company is currently raising a Series B round.

Apex.OS has its roots in the open-source Robot Operating System known as ROS, which is often used in R&D projects and the development of self-driving cars. Apex aims to rewrite the code to handle functional safety and real-time processing.

Becker said that people had long believed that open source code was not certifiable, but the company spent a year to certify it.

“A software crash on a laptop is inconvenient, but if it happened in a car with any safety-critical function, it would be catastrophic,” said Becker. “So we set out to write reliable software to prevent system crashes or operational failures. The software failure rate is so low that it cannot be statistically represented, so this certification proves that we achieved our goal.”