When Pokémon Go launched in 2016, millions of players wandered around parks, streets, and city landmarks chasing virtual creatures. What most people didn’t realise at the time is that those same gameplay moments were quietly building one of the largest visual datasets of the real world ever created.

Nearly a decade later, that massive pool of images is being used to help delivery robots find their way through cities. According to new reporting by MIT Technology Review, the data collected through Pokémon Go has helped train an AI system that can determine location with centimetre-level precision just by analysing nearby buildings and landmarks.

Pokémon Go Players Helped Create A 30 Billion Image Dataset

Over the years, Pokémon Go players have collectively captured billions of images while interacting with real-world landmarks inside the game. These scans happened whenever players visited PokéStops, gyms, or completed in-game tasks that asked them to photograph statues, buildings, and other points of interest.

The result is an enormous dataset. According to reporting from MIT Technology Review, Niantic’s augmented reality games, including Pokémon Go and Ingress, have generated roughly 30 billion images tied to precise location metadata.

Each image doesn’t just contain a picture. It also includes information about where the phone was positioned, the direction it was facing, how the device was moving, and other sensor data. Combined across millions of players, that information forms detailed multi-angle views of real-world locations.

Many of these images are concentrated around more than one million landmark locations that players frequently visited in-game, such as battle arenas or notable public sites.

Niantic Spatial Is Turning That Data Into A World Model

The dataset is now being used by Niantic Spatial, an AI company created by Niantic to develop advanced mapping technology.

Its core system is called a Visual Positioning System, or VPS. Instead of relying only on GPS signals, VPS determines location based on what a camera sees in the surrounding environment. By comparing real-world images to its database, the system can estimate a position within a few centimetres.

That level of precision is difficult for traditional GPS to achieve in dense cities. Tall buildings can cause signals to bounce and interfere with each other, which often leads to location errors. In urban environments, a GPS marker on a phone can drift by dozens of metres, sometimes placing a person on the wrong street.

Niantic Spatial’s approach aims to solve that problem by using visual landmarks rather than satellite signals alone.

Delivery Robots Are The First Real-World Test

The first major deployment of the technology comes through a partnership with Coco Robotics.

Coco operates roughly 1,000 small sidewalk delivery robots across cities such as Los Angeles, Chicago, Miami, Jersey City, and Helsinki. These machines typically travel at around five miles per hour and carry items like takeaway meals or groceries.

Image Credit: Niantic Spatial

So far, Coco says its robots have completed more than half a million deliveries while travelling millions of miles.

However, navigation has always been one of the hardest challenges for delivery robots. Dense city areas with underpasses, high-rise buildings, and busy streets often disrupt GPS signals, making it difficult for autonomous machines to determine their exact position.

With Niantic Spatial’s VPS system, Coco’s robots use four cameras to scan their surroundings.

Image Credit: Coco Robotics

By matching those images with Niantic’s massive database, the robots can more accurately determine where they are and where they need to go.

That precision could help robots stop in the correct pickup spot outside restaurants and arrive directly at a customer’s doorstep instead of a few metres away.

How Pokémon Go Gameplay Became Mapping Data

Pokémon Go’s design made it particularly effective at generating real-world mapping data.

Players were encouraged to visit specific locations and point their phone cameras at landmarks from different angles. Over time, the game even introduced features that rewarded users for scanning locations in detail.

Because millions of people contributed images of the same places at different times of day, lighting conditions, and weather situations, Niantic ended up with a diverse and highly detailed dataset.

According to Niantic Spatial CTO Brian McClendon, the company now has thousands of images for many of these locations. That allows the system to recognise landmarks reliably even when conditions change.

The Technology Could Go Beyond Delivery Robots

The Coco Robotics partnership is only the beginning of what Niantic Spatial calls a “living map” of the world.

The idea is to continuously update digital representations of cities as new data comes in. Robots navigating streets could capture additional images and feed them back into the system, gradually improving its accuracy.

Niantic Spatial CEO John Hanke says the long-term goal is to create a model that helps machines better understand real-world environments. While the technology originally aimed to improve augmented reality experiences, the rapid growth of robotics has opened up a different use case.

As robots begin to share sidewalks and public spaces with humans, systems that understand real-world surroundings with high precision could become essential for navigation and safety.

For now, though, the most immediate result is a surprising one. The same game that once sent players out hunting Pikachu may soon help robots deliver pizza more accurately.

The post Pokemon Go Players Generated 30 Billion Images To Help Delivery Robots Navigate Cities appeared first on Shane the Gamer.

Six months after being named as winners of the Spark 5G Starter Fund, four innovative Kiwi businesses are launching their game-changing technology prototypes, offering a first look at the positive outcomes 5G can bring to communities across New Zealand.

Robotics company Rocos, VR gaming creator Beyond and health businesses Objective Acuity and oDocs Eye Care were the successful recipients of a share of $625,000 of funding and technology support from Spark in October 2020.

Since then, each business has been tirelessly developing, testing and refining its 5G solution tapping into expert 5G technical support and business mentoring by Spark and its partners.

This involved an exclusive opportunity to test and co-create each 5G-powered solution inside Spark’s new Innovation Studio that launched to the public in March 2021.

Entry criteria for Spark’s initiative required the technology concepts to demonstrate how 5G could bring positive outcomes to communities across New Zealand.

Spark’s Technology Director, Mark Beder says that the Spark 5G Starter Fund uncovered some of New Zealand’s most innovative 5G pioneers.

“Each winner is set to make history by being amongst the first in the country to embrace the powerful potential of our 5G network to revolutionise their respective industries. From democratising eyecare, developing a world-first immersive gaming experiences and taking the manufacturing industry to new, robotic heights, Spark is proud to support these four Kiwi businesses to deliver transformative solutions for New Zealand and New Zealanders.”

oDocsis on a mission to make eyecare globally accessible, equitable and affordable. Using the power of 5G, oDocs has developed a secure and encrypted live consultation portal that serves to connect healthcare professionals to patients in remote regions. 5G technology makes it possible for clinicians, expert and non-expert, to conduct an instantaneous live-stream consultation using a 5G enabled device attached to a handheld ophthalmoscope. The portal will empower and enable all clinicians for appropriate triaging and referrals to ophthalmologists, reducing waiting lists for screening and follow-up, thus improving the management of the healthcare workforce.

Objective Acuityis breaking away from the traditional and often unreliable letter chart vision test by using 5G technology to develop a suite of software-based vision screening and acuity tests that are more accessible and accurate for detecting vision problems in younger children. Spark 5G enables Objective Acuity to further improve accuracy and make testing up to 7 times more efficient through a real-time result. It will soon use AI to optimise the test automatically as data is collected – helping Objective Acuity towards its ultimate goal of democratising vision screening.

Beyond is a Wellington-based virtual reality game studio, has developed a world-first for the e-sport market – the ability for multiple gamers to join free-roam, virtual reality game Oddball via their 5G mobile phone, opening the location-based VR gaming world to those without a VR headset. The application is made possible through 5G, which in the future will ensure no players experience any lag and enables both physical VR and mobile players to interact seamlessly and safely together. 5G enables Beyond to bring immersive VR to the masses like never before. High speed enables 4k streaming of our content on mobile phones and players will be able to join in on the fun in real-time.

Rocos is demonstrating the power of 5G by showcasing how remote teleoperation and robotic automation can be used to revolutionise industries. The mass connectivity and low latency that 5G will provide in the future, will make it possible to automate physical tasks at scale, improving the capability of autonomous missions undertaken by robots, such as scanning and monitoring a construction site or power grid, thereby reducing health and safety risks.

The 5G Starter Fund winners showcased their 5G technology solutions during a Media Demo Day on May 6th, 2021 at Spark City in Auckland, New Zealand.

To find out more about the Spark 5G Starter Fund visit spark.co.nz/5g/home/starter-fund/.

The post Spark NZ Showcases 5G-powered Robotics, Gaming & Eye Care Prototypes appeared first on Shane the Gamer.