Sharing is Caring
The world's first iPhone hacker is not some scrawny, shady kid anymore. In fact George Hotz, has now founded a company that develops self-driving technology. Now, Comma.ai, has open-sourced a dataset of 7.25 hours of highway driving.
You might think 7.25 hours of highway driving is not much. Maybe yes, when compared to Google and Tesla's million miles of autonomous driving data in real-world conditions. But, in terms of publicly shared comparative datasets for highway driving, Comma.ai's share will surely not fall short.
The Power of Quantity
A huge part of the country's roads are highways, so datasets for these play an integral role in securing the future success of autonomous vehicles. Despite the millions of miles of driving data present, available highway driving data is insufficient, as most cases involved urban driving tests. TechCrunch suggests that this made it difficult for everyone to accomplish the project.
Open-sourcing allows for more efficient development, as it offers the opportunity for countless efforts from thousands of developers on one project. With this, the company and the community will not make the same mistake as the other, therefore hastening the project. Furthermore, it will allow for the company to build a talent pipeline where it can observe what people are doing with the source and pick out noteworthy applications for the project.
But having thousands of developers means having thousands of people that know your tech. Business-wise, this may alarm some individuals. In spite of this, the company remains confident that it will not falter. In fact, it believes that people will recognize the company's crucial edge—its ability to make the tech faster, smarter, and cheaper.
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