Waymo shares some of his autonomous car data to help researchers

The Waymo team explained that this was an opportunity to improve the industry as a whole. He hoped that the data would not only improve other autonomous vehicles, but also general concepts such as perception, behavior prediction and scene comprehension. These could help with computer vision tasks, especially robotics and other areas where recognition of objects could prove vital.

There is a lot more data that Waymo does not share, and it's not surprising that the company does not share the way it processes sensor information – this would give a competitive advantage. However, this is only the "first step", and Waymo said he was looking for information on how to make future data releases "more efficient". If nothing else, it could be useful for both standalone self-sustaining businesses that have missing data or for newcomers who could use a handful of data to get things done.