Your Pokémon Go data has helped Niantic AI power urban delivery robots

All your Pokémon Go hours will now help robots deliver pizza in time

When Pokémon Go debuted in 2016, it became an overnight sensation. From London to New York, it felt as though everyone had installed Niantic's augmented reality Pokémon mobile app and had taken to the streets in a frenzied attempt to catch them all. While Niantic no longer owns Pokémon Go, which Scopely acquired in March 2025, the data collected by Niantic during those years is now being used to train robots.

This news comes from Niantic Spatial's announcement of a new partnership with Coco Robotics, which has developed an urban robot designed to deliver food through complex urban landscapes. With this collaboration, Coco Robotics will be leaning on Niantic's expertise in "spatial AI and its Visual Positioning System (VPS)" to further improve Coco Robotics' titular delivery robot, Coco: a fleet of around 1,000 flight-case-size robots built to carry up to eight extra-large pizzas or four grocery bags, deployed in Los Angeles, Chicago, Jersey City, Miami, and Helsinki. One of the biggest challenges Coco faces is that the GPS signal can be weak in cities where radio waves bounce off big buildings.

“The promise of last-mile robotics is immense, but the reality of navigating chaotic city streets is one of the hardest engineering challenges,” said John Hanke, CEO of Niantic Spatial, an AI offshoot that Niantic founded in May 2025, via the company's blog. “We are thrilled to be working with Coco Robotics as our first robotics partner and deploying spatial intelligence to help solve these challenges head-on.” Hanke also added that “It turns out that getting Pikachu to realistically run around and getting Coco’s robot to safely and accurately move through the world is actually the same problem.”

All the data collected by people playing Pokémon Go and its previous augmented reality game, Ingress, is now being used to build an accurate model of the cities that Coco has to navigate. With Niantic's VPS system, Pokémon Go can determine a player's location in the world from their surroundings rather than relying on a player's GPS location. By having players use their phones at different angles, Niantic was able to scan real-world locations and landmarks, with players gathering the data they needed to ensure better accuracy across a range of conditions, such as height, angle, and weather.

In 2020, Pokémon Go added a feature called "Field Research," which rewarded players for taking photos and scans of their surroundings in exchange for items and rare Pokémon. Whether they understood the implications or not (Niantic has always been open about building datasets), players helped feed Niantic data that was later used to train fast-food delivery robots.

While Niantic never hid that it was collecting data, it's not hard to imagine that some Pokémon fans won't be too happy about that data being used by an AI company to train robots. Hopefully, the Coco fleet will at least have a better sense of direction than Leon from the Pokémon franchise.