According to recent reports, player interactions with the game have helped its developer, Niantic, build a highly detailed AI-powered navigation system that is now being used beyond gaming, including in robotics.
At the centre of this system is Niantic’s Visual Positioning System (VPS). The technology relies on real-world scans captured by players when they interact with PokéStops, Gyms and landmarks. Over time, these scans have produced billions of images and spatial data points, helping the company build an increasingly detailed digital map of the physical world.
Unlike traditional navigation systems that rely heavily on GPS signals, VPS works through visual recognition. By comparing live camera input with its stored database of locations, the system can determine precise positioning, even in dense urban environments where GPS signals often struggle due to interference from buildings.
From AR game to robotics infrastructure
What began as a gaming feature is now finding applications in the real world.Niantic’s AI spin-out has partnered with robotics company Coco Robotics to integrate the system into delivery robots. These machines use VPS to navigate sidewalks, intersections and pickup points with greater accuracy, making them more suitable for last-mile delivery in cities.
In simple terms, the challenge of placing a virtual Pokémon convincingly in a real-world location is closely related to helping a robot understand and move through that same environment. Both rely heavily on spatial awareness.The dataset built through the game is especially valuable because of its diversity. Players capture locations from multiple angles, at different times of day, and in varying weather conditions. Combined with metadata such as camera movement and device orientation, this information helps machines interpret environments more reliably.
Niantic has described its long-term vision as building a “living map” of the world, a constantly evolving digital model that improves as more visual data is added through games and connected devices.
What this means for India
India has quietly become an important market for Pokémon Go. While official player numbers are not publicly disclosed, the game has built a strong community across multiple cities, with dozens of organised player groups and regular local events.
The company has also been increasing its focus on the country. In March last year, India hosted its first Pokémon GO Safari Mumbai 2025, a two-day event that brought thousands of players together in person. Events like Safari Zone are typically organised only in markets where the company sees strong long-term potential, signalling how seriously Niantic views the Indian player base.
At the same time, the company has expanded the game’s real-world map in the country by adding hundreds of thousands of PokéStops and locations across cities and towns. Each interaction with these landmarks adds more visual data to Niantic’s mapping system.
For Indian players, this means the simple act of scanning a landmark or interacting with a PokéStop may have contributed to something much larger. The same data that helps place a virtual Pokémon on a street corner could eventually help autonomous machines navigate real-world environments.
A gaming phenomenon with unexpected consequences
When Pokémon Go launched in 2016, it was seen as a breakthrough in augmented reality gaming. Nearly a decade later, its impact may extend far beyond mobile entertainment.
With hundreds of millions of players collectively mapping the world through their phones, the game has quietly created one of the largest visual datasets of real-world locations.
What started as a global hunt for virtual creatures may now be helping train the next generation of AI systems that navigate cities.
