Pokémon Go Data Now Powers Delivery Robots
Niantic Spatial and Coco Robotics are using location data from millions of Pokémon Go players to navigate delivery bots.
All those years catching Pikachu on sidewalks? Turns out you were training delivery robots.
Niantic Spatial has partnered with Coco Robotics to embed its visual positioning system into Coco's fleet of delivery bots. The tech was trained on massive amounts of location and spatial data collected from players of Pokémon Go and Ingress — Niantic's augmented-reality games that launched in 2016 and 2012 respectively.
Pokémon Go became the world's first AR megahit after its release by the Google spinout. Players unknowingly mapped real-world environments at enormous scale as they wandered streets and parks hunting virtual creatures.
Now that spatial intelligence is being repurposed. Coco's robots will use the visual positioning system to navigate urban environments with greater precision — effectively seeing the world through data gathered by millions of gamers.
It's a clever second act for one of gaming's most unlikely datasets.