Software can analyse millions of static photos of city streets taken atop cars and construct a realistic 3D model that could be used to create immersive maps or even train driverless cars safely in a virtual environment. Block-NeRF was created by a team of researchers at driverless car company Waymo and Google Research, which are both owned by Alphabet. The tool uses vast numbers of photos taken by cameras mounted atop Waymo's autonomous cars and builds numerous small 3D models, each covering just over one city block.

At Google IO today Waymo took the stage to discuss self-driving cars. Its big pitch: Waymo and Google have "unlocked truly autonomous vehicles." First up, Waymo and Google are making driverless cars safer for pedestrians. Google Brain and Waymo were able to to reduce the error-rate for detecting pedestrians by 100X (not 100 percent, but still!). The company showed off its AI's ability to detect pedestrians in incredibly obscure situations.