Waymo is usually secretive, but it just opened up in a big way

Sasha Lekach
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Waymo is finally opening up. 

The autonomous vehicle company, which is owned by Google parent Alphabet, released several hours of self-driving footage on Wednesday. It's a rare move for a company that keeps most of its data close to its chest.

The Waymo Open Dataset contains 1,000 pieces of footage from self-driving tests in California, Washington, and Arizona. The 20-second segments come from the five LiDAR sensors and cameras on each car, which captured other cars, pedestrians, buses, cyclists, and more. Overall, Waymo labeled 12 million objects for the project. 

Waymo's Drago Anguelov, principal scientist and head of research, says opening up the data for the research community was a "labor of love." But it may be out of necessity, too. This isn't the same atmosphere that led to the Uber v. Waymo trade secrets trial. Read more...

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