Lyft opens to the public autonomous driving data set from its Level 5 self-driving fleet

Lyft is offering to the public a set of autonomous driving data that it calls the "largest public data set of its kind," containing over 55,000 3D frames of captured footage hand-labeled by human reviewers, data collected by seven cameras and as many as three lidars depending on the car used, plus a drivable surface map and HD spatial semantic data that corresponds to the captured info to provide context to researchers. The data set is the work of Lyft Level 5, the division of the ride-hailing company that is responsible for its research and development of self-driving vehicle technology (hence the name, which is borrowed from SAE's levels of autonomy for cars, with Level 5 being the highest). Lyft Level 5 EVP of Autonomous Technology Luc Vincent notes in the post that the company is "committed to democratizing access to this tech," and plans to continue to "release additional data" going forward.