Niantic Spatial Inc. and Snap Inc. have entered into a multi-year strategic partnership to collaborate on building next-generation maps for AR glasses and AI agents to understand, navigate and interact with the real world. Snap will also make an additional financial investment in geospatial AI startup Niantic Spatial Inc.
Real-world AR experiences:
Leveraging Niantic Spatial’s Visual Positioning System (VPS), AR content can be placed in millions of real-world locations with centimeter-precision. These experiences can be enjoyed through Snapchat and Spectacles.
Next-Gen Map Expansion:
Snapchatters and developers will be able to scan new locations and expand the map, opening up even more places to bring AR experiences to.
Evolving spatial intelligence:
These shared maps will provide new capabilities for understanding and interacting with the real world.
Later this year, Niantic Spatial’s scanning technology and VPS will be integrated into Lens Studio, Snapchat and Spectacles, enabling 400,000 AR developers to create new digital experiences in millions of locations that can be experienced and participated in by 900 million Snapchatters as part of the map expansion.
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In addition to building maps, Niantic Spatial’s Visual Positioning System (VPS) and scanning technology
It enables developers to build Snap AR Lenses that connect to the real world in meaningful and persistent ways.
Snap’s AR Lenses allow developers to anchor their AR experiences to millions of real-world locations with centimeter-precision. This doesn’t just mean overlaying an effect on the camera view, it means the experience truly exists in the real world. For example, you could create a lens that starts a virtual concert in a city square, or opens a portal only when you’re near a specific park bench. VPS makes this possible, allowing multiple people to share the same AR experience at the same time in the same place. This is an incredibly powerful new tool for turning public spaces into canvases for creativity.
In AI-driven experiences, VPS unlocks spatial intelligence to help AI agents understand the real world by providing always-on localization, precision navigation, and contextual awareness of their surroundings, giving the AI the ability to perceive and think about the world more like a human than a GPS system.
Unlike traditional navigation tools, your AI companion won’t just recognize a location, it will understand that location’s characteristics, like the most comfortable bench, the sunny sidewalk, or the hidden courtyard.
It allows us to “experience” the world rather than just “move” through it.
Niantic Spatial Inc. was spun out in May 2024 under the leadership of John Hanke to enable further acceleration and expansion in the geospatial AI space.
In addition to the investment from Snap, the company has already raised $250 million in funding.
SOURCE: PRTimes
