Lyft Makes Its Self-Driving Research Data Available To The Public

Lyft is making its research data on self-driving technology available to the public in a bid to accelerate development of autonomous vehicles.

On Tuesday, the ride-hailing company said its release of research data includes over 55,000 three-dimensional frames received from cameras, Lidar, and radar systems installed on its research fleet of autonomous cars.

In addition, Lyft has included data from detailed maps gathered over almost two years by its test fleet , Bloomberg reports.

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Lyft says that by releasing its driverless data, it will push those developing the technology to come up with solutions to solve the remaining challenges related to self-driving vehicles.

“One way to help accelerate innovation in this space is to have broader collaboration not just with industry, but with academia,” Lyft’s autonomous driving unit executive vice president Luc Vincent said. “We don’t care about doing everything in secrecy; we care about accelerating the whole industry. It’s quite possible that through this data we will accelerate another player that will eventually create something great. Then hopefully we will put that on the Lyft platform.”

While some could see this move as rather generous, in fact the company probably has nothing to lose. Lyft is working with the likes of Alphabet’s self-driving car division, Waymo, as well as leading automotive parts supplier Aptiv to develop its technology and believes eliminating human drivers in taxis could cut costs by as much as 60 per cent.