Niantic Spatial, a spin-off from the Pokémon Go developer Niantic, is leveraging data from the mobile game to enhance GPS-free navigation for military drones. The company announced a partnership with Vantor, a US defense contractor, to address challenges posed by GPS signal jamming and spoofing. According to the partnership, the combined technologies aim to improve the accuracy of autonomous systems and field teams when satellite signals are compromised. Early tests showed error reductions of up to 70 percent and an accuracy of about 1.5 meters, according to a Niantic Spatial blog post.
The data used to train Niantic's AI models came from voluntary scans by Pokémon Go players, who were incentivized in a 2021 update to capture real-world locations with their smartphones. These scans generated billions of visual mapping data points, according to DroneXL. The scans were used to train Niantic's foundation models, not directly transferred to Vantor. A Niantic Spatial spokesperson noted that the data was submitted by players who opted into the feature and was governed by the privacy and terms-of-service policies in place at the time.
In February 2026, Vantor secured a US Army contract worth up to $217 million for the One World Terrain program, which focuses on high-precision 3D terrain data for military simulations. While there is no public evidence that Pokémon Go data is part of this contract, the partnership highlights the growing intersection between consumer technology and defense applications. GPS jamming and spoofing have already been used in conflicts in Ukraine and Iran to disrupt drones and missiles.
Source: thedecoder
