{"id":528725,"date":"2026-03-17T12:21:07","date_gmt":"2026-03-17T12:21:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/528725\/"},"modified":"2026-03-17T12:21:07","modified_gmt":"2026-03-17T12:21:07","slug":"your-pokemon-go-data-will-help-train-food-delivery-robots","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/528725\/","title":{"rendered":"Your &#8216;Pok\u00e9mon Go&#8217; data will help train food delivery robots"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"dist__StyledText-sc-5791265-8 bdIWsa\">Ten years ago you were catching Rattatas with the homies, and now all that work is going to help sidewalk droids deliver hoagies. The internet is reeling this week after learning that Niantic Spatial, part of the team from Pok\u00e9mon Go, recently <a href=\"https:\/\/www.technologyreview.com\/2026\/03\/10\/1134099\/how-pokemon-go-is-helping-robots-deliver-pizza-on-time\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">struck a deal<\/a> to train food delivery robots using data the game collected from users.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dist__StyledText-sc-5791265-8 bdIWsa\">One of the world\u2019s largest visual data sets. Niantic Spatial, an AI company <a href=\"https:\/\/www.morningbrew.com\/stories\/2025\/03\/13\/saudi-arabia-buys-pokemon-go\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">spun off<\/a> from Pok\u00e9mon Go developer Niantic, built a model that can reportedly geolocate down to the centimeter using 30+ billion images captured by Pok\u00e9mon Go users. Now:<\/p>\n<p>A Sam Altman-backed company called Coco Robotics will use this tool to teach its 1,000-bot fleet to better navigate Los Angeles, Chicago, and a few other cities where it operates.Coco expects Niantic Spatial\u2019s model\u2014which identifies locations by sight\u2014to help in urban areas where tall buildings can interfere with GPS signals.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dist__StyledText-sc-5791265-8 bdIWsa\">Players may not have realized\u2026a 2020 Pok\u00e9mon Go feature called \u201cField Research\u201d <a href=\"https:\/\/www.popsci.com\/technology\/pokemon-go-delivery-robots-crowdsourcing\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">incentivized<\/a> image collection by rewarding them for scanning real-world landmarks. Many users may feel duped by the robotics partnership: Niantic only <a href=\"https:\/\/www.morningbrew.com\/stories\/your-pokemon-go-data-is-being-used-to-train-ai\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">announced<\/a> its plan to build a navigation model using Pok\u00e9mon Go data in 2024.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dist__StyledText-sc-5791265-8 bdIWsa\">Looking ahead\u2026Niantic Spatial ultimately wants to build a live map of the entire world, a company executive told MIT Technology Review.\u2014ML<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ten years ago you were catching Rattatas with the homies, and now all that work is going to&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":528726,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[44],"tags":[74,179,509,180],"class_list":["post-528725","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-virtual-reality","tag-technology","tag-virtual-reality","tag-virtualreality","tag-vr"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/528725","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=528725"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/528725\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/528726"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=528725"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=528725"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=528725"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}