Pokémon maker Niantic takes big leap in 3D-mapping tech by buying 6D.ai startup
/Niantic’s 2016 hit game Pokémon Go let players see digital things carefully placed within the real world as seen through their smartphone camera. The game introduced many people to the concept of augmented reality. Now Niantic is buying 6D.ai, a small company with a vaunted technology for mapping the digital world to the real world for AR developers.
Niantic has been working on its own 3D-mapping technology, but the addition of 6D.ai’s technology and people could push its efforts far down the road in terms of accuracy and completeness.
6D.ai’s mapping technology crowdsources the views of smartphone cameras in the wild to form its 3D map of the world. Using 6D.ai’s map, developers can build apps containing digital images that are persistent—that is, linked to the same spots in the real world from one AR app session to the next, and for all users of the same app. The 6D.ai map also captures the depth of the camera’s view, allowing app developers to create digital content that can be hidden by aspects of the real world.
Now, that technology and visual data will be folded into Niantic’s 3D map of the world, called the Niantic Real World Platform.