Pokemon GO Studio Niantic uses data to train delivery bots

Pokémon Go the creator, Niantic, revealed in March 2026 that it has been working with other companies to train delivery bots using data captured by players. The amazing 2016 mobile game where players go out into the real world to catch Pokemon hiding near them has received over 1 billion downloads over the years. Many people use it Pokémon Go to capture images all over the world, and it seems that Niantic has found a use for those images.

Niantic, now known as Niantic Spatial, no longer owns or operates Pokémon Go. The popular mobile game was part of a $3.5 billion sale to Scopely in early 2025. The sale of Pokémon Go and Niantic's entire mobile game library got some people excited and others upset at the time. The future of the title was up in the air and fans were worried about the uncertainty.

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Pokemon Go creator Niantic uses player data to train pizza delivery robots

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On March 10, 2026, Niantic Spatial announced that the original creator and runner of the Pokémon Go has teamed up with a robotics company called Coco Robotics to use player-collected data to help train delivery robots. Coco Robotics has a fleet of around 1,000 suitcase-sized robots, which are designed to carry and deliver pizzas in busy urban environments. Common forms of travel data, such as GPS, don't work well on their own for robots in cities.

The collaboration with Niantic Spatial is intended to use millions of photo scans of real streets, landmarks and buildings captured by Pokémon Go players to form a model that the robot's “brain” will refer to as it travels to help itself navigate. The combination of GPS data and the world map built by player photo scans are meant to help the bots navigate more efficiently without getting lost. Such a popular game as Pokémon Go has given the AI model that the bots use over 30 billion images to train with. What makes Niantic's images so useful is that their games funneled players into the same hot spots in their cities, where they all took pictures of the same places, but from a variety of angles with different lighting and weather conditions.

Robots are already making their way into the gaming industry, and it's becoming more apparent with each passing year that robots are likely to play a role in the world going forward. A video game company that used data collected from players to help train pizza delivery robots was more than likely not what anyone expected. The use of a Pokémon mobile games that help train robots showcase the creative solutions engineers are coming up with to further develop AI and robotics.

In a world where players are constantly worried about their privacy and data usage, it's worth noting that Niantic hasn't secretly captured data from players' phones over the years. All data used was intentionally captured while Pokémon Go was actively played. It will be interesting to see if there are other innovative ways to use the unique data collected from Pokémon Go in the future.