Waymo will open its data set for free to accelerate the development of autonomous driving

According to the Financial Times, in order to accelerate the development of autonomous driving, Waymo, an autonomous driving subsidiary of Alphabet, announced on Wednesday local time that it would make the company's largest fully self-driving data set ever available to external researchers for free.

The dataset contains high-definition self-driving scenes in different environments and road conditions collected by Waymo through sensors and cameras, and different objects such as pedestrians, cyclists, and advertising signs are carefully marked on it.

Since autonomous driving algorithms need to learn millions of data before they can better understand the real world, these labeled data are very important.

Waymo is considered the most advanced company in the development of self-driving car technology. Morgan Stanley and Jefferies estimate that the company's market value could reach $175 billion and $250 billion respectively, and it will soon be able to provide driverless versions of Uber services in major cities around the world.

Opening up the data set is also a major change for Waymo. Compared with its competitors that choose to ally with traditional car manufacturers, Waymo has always adopted a vertically integrated development approach, developing all its hardware and software by itself.

The Financial Times pointed out that this action may also mean that Waymo believes that continuing to fight alone can no longer meet everyone's high expectations, so it is making concessions.

However, Waymo research head Drago Anguelov said that this is not an admission of their own incompetence, they just believe that the entire industry is now facing the problem of lack of sufficient data.

Last month, Cruise, the self-driving company under General Motors, announced that it would postpone the launch of its driverless car service originally scheduled for this year due to the need for more testing.

In addition, due to the many high-profile self-driving car accidents that have occurred, many manufacturers including Intel, Nvidia, and General Motors have begun discussions in the hope of establishing a set of safe self-driving car standards.