Pokemon Go gamers’ non-compulsory location scans reportedly helped prepare Niantic Spatial’s visible positioning system, which makes use of digicam imagery and 3D maps to navigate when GPS is unavailable or jammed. Based on DroneXL, that know-how is now being paired with Vantor’s drone navigation software program for navy and intelligence use, elevating questions on whether or not players understood that footage collected for in-game rewards may finally help protection methods. From the report: The pipeline runs from a cellular sport to the battlefield in three steps. Gamers scanned the bodily world. Niantic Spatial turned these scans right into a 3D map that lets a machine find itself by sight when satellite tv for pc indicators fail. And in December 2025, Niantic Spatial introduced a partnership with Vantor, the protection and intelligence agency previously often known as Maxar Intelligence, to fuse that ground-level system with Vantor’s aerial navigation software program to be used in GPS-denied operations.
I’ve spent years protecting how drones lose their approach the second an digital warfare unit switches on a jammer, an issue that has unfold from the battlefield into civilian airspace, from Ukrainian workshops biking by navigation generations to American packages scrambling for options. The unsettling a part of this story shouldn’t be the know-how. It’s the place the coaching information got here from, and whether or not the individuals who equipped it might have agreed had anybody defined the vacation spot. “Now as a part of Scopely (the Saudi-owned firm that acquired Niantic final 12 months for $3.5 billion), Pokemon GO information shouldn’t be shared with Niantic Spatial,” an organization spokesperson stated in a press release to Kotaku. “AR Scans collected by Pokemon GO had been submitted voluntarily by gamers who opted into the characteristic and had been topic to the relevant Phrases of Service and Privateness Coverage on the time. The discontinuation of AR scanning and the top of knowledge sharing with Niantic Spatial had been a part of the transition planning related to Pokemon GO’s transfer to Scopely.”
