We've known for a while that the real reason Niantic has had Pokemon Go players snapping photos of the real world all over the globe was so it could be mapped, and not so that it could fill its AR version with more gyms and PokeStops. Now we know that at least one of the reasons for this mapping on a global scale was so that Go players' photos could be used to help autonomous robots navigate the world.
A report from MIT Technology Review has detailed the relationship between Niantic and Coco Robotics, the company responsible for the fleet of autonomous delivery robots that now know exactly where they're going thanks to Pokemon Go. I mean exactly, too, as the Go mapping is apparently preferential to regular old GPS, as due to players having taken more than 30 billion photos during Pokemon Go's first ten years, the robots can get to where they need to be with incredible accuracy.
According to MIT, the bright pink 'bots are typically never more than a few centimeters away from where they need to be, and it's all thanks to you. Well, only if you played Pokemon Go at any point in the...
