For nearly a decade, Pokémon Go has allowed users to find virtual objects in the real world. Now, it turns out that the data collected during the game helps delivery robots navigate more accurately.
This week, Niantic Spatial announced a partnership with Coco Robotics, a company that makes short-distance delivery robots.
The pink delivery robots, named Coco, will navigate using Niantic’s Visual Positioning System — VPS. This system analyzes surrounding buildings and landmarks to determine the robot’s location with an accuracy of a few centimeters. The VPS system was trained on more than 30 billion photos taken by Pokémon Go players.
The company’s CEO, John Hanke, said that getting Pikachu to move in the real world and teaching the robot to navigate safely on the street are essentially solving the same technological problem.
Unlike GPS, VPS relies on the environment, not satellites. Since GPS can be unstable, especially in cities with many tall buildings, the robots sometimes lose their direction. Coco’s robots will use the VPS and four cameras to determine their routes by analyzing the environment more accurately.
