Ford shares a year's worth of self-driving car data

Self-driving vehicles require massive amounts of data, which can be difficult to obtain without vehicles equipped with cameras and LiDAR and miles and miles of testing. To help advance autonomous vehicle research, Ford is releasing a comprehensive self-driving dataset to academics and researchers. "There's no better way of promoting research and development than ensuring the academic community has the data it needs to create effective self-driving vehicle algorithms," the company wrote in a Medium post. The data was collected over the span of one year, and it comes from multiple self-driving research vehicles. It includes LiDAR and camera sensor data, GPS and trajectory information, as well as 3D point cloud and ground reflectivity maps.