Pikachu just helped deliver your pizza, Pokemon Go data is now guiding food delivery robots

Pokemon Go players unknowingly trained delivery robots for years after generating over 30 billion scans that Niantic has now repurposed to power Coco Robotics’ autonomous bots.

According to MIT Technology Review, more than 30 billion images and scans generated by Pokemon Go and Ingress players have trained Niantic’s Visual Positioning System (VPS).

The system is now being used by Niantic Spatial to help Coco Robotics’ delivery robots navigate urban environments with centimeter-level accuracy, where GPS often fails

While playing the game, players scanned real-world PokeStops, Gyms, and landmarks with their phone cameras to complete Field Research tasks and earn rewards.

How Pokemon GO scans help train delivery robots

Each scan captured a photo of the location along with rich metadata, including exact GPS coordinates, camera angle, time of day, weather conditions, and player movement.

Niantic used this massive dataset to train its Visual Positioning System to recognise buildings, signs, and street features with high precision, the same technology now guiding Coco Robotics’ delivery robots.

Niantic Spatial CEO John Hanke explained the unexpected connection: “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.”

The revelation has sparked a wave of amused reactions across the Pokemon Go community. Many players were already aware that their scans and movements contributed to Niantic’s mapping system, but most had no idea the data would later be repurposed to train commercial delivery robots.

Reddit threads have been filled with jokes about “Pikachu trained the robots” alongside light discussions about data usage and privacy.