this post was submitted on 07 Mar 2025
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One interesting alternative would be the Visual Positioning System (VPS) that Niantic has built from Pokemon go player data. Basically you can take a picture outside and your phone will know exactly where you are:
https://www.nianticspatial.com/locate#vps
https://arstechnica.com/ai/2024/11/niantic-uses-pokemon-go-player-data-to-build-ai-navigation-system/
Too bad they're getting close to being bought out by a company that's notorious for squeezing out every penny from their player base.
Yeah so good luck using that in the middle of the woods
Would this work in a war zone if everything that used to be there was gone now?
I doubt it would work well, but with enough training data it would be able to pick up on some areas. Especially if there are large landmarks in the frame (mountains/hills/rivers, etc.).
It's also what Google Maps live view is using. Street view imagery plus rough location plus on-phone camera sensor calibration data allows it to compute highly accurate positions relative to surroundings.