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abroszka33
organsnyder
My son showed me how he does these quests: he points the phone at the floor and just wiggles it back and forth.
snapetom
My friend did this. He always took pictures of his feet. He was banned from submitting scans and Wayfarer for a few years. He just got access back.
We joke that maybe PoGo didn't get any benefit from his data, but someone did.
abroszka33
Haha :D Good tip, I will try that too.
deadbabe
Your son is a bad data point.
organsnyder
Aww... shucks. I'm such a proud father.
Supermancho
Bad for some goals, good for others.
FrustratedMonky
exactly. that is why i doubt they will get actual navigable information out of it.
pohl
To maintain that take, wouldn't you need to offer a plausible way that Niantic managed to train their Visual Positioning System using that data if the data was all bad?
mikae1
> I don't think many players are doing it.
Do we have to think? Apparently they amassed 30B images. :)
momoschili
30B images isn't that much in the context of Pokemon Go playerbase of ~50 million (conservative estimate based on users today). That's about 600 images per person, in a game that has been out since 2016... that's pretty low adoption as the previous user said. I don't think the quest has been out since 2016, but considering a large fraction of users are basically daily users, it's still quite a small number of images.
jurgenburgen
600 images per person is a huge amount, especially considering some amount of people are like the GP and don’t do it. The active picture takers would be taking _more_ than 600 images.
skeledrew
That 30B could just be the useful set after cleanup.
Larrikin
I used to just record the ground and even leave out my feet, but apparently they detect and ban people who do this too often now. The data was always going somewhere shady, but after the sale it is even worse so I just stopped completely. At best you get a poffin or rare candy and that absolutely is not worth it.
DennisP
> obvious what it does, and I think the game even tells you that they want to understands how the POI looks like in 3D.
But most people probably assumed the purpose was to improve the game, not to train delivery robots.
Or whatever else they end up doing with the data. If, as the article suggests, this ends up adding to the surveillance state by making geolocation of photos more accurate, then I really don't think that's what the players had in mind.
abroszka33
I'm pretty sure that by now almost everybody know that anything you put online is monetised. I'm also 100% sure they sell my location data as well. I just don't care. Not my responsibility to stop it.
ohyoutravel
Same, I do it once in a great while. Give me a rare candy or rare candy XL per scan and you’ll find me jumping all over the neighborhood!
snapetom
I'd imagine it's not just the research quests, but it's submissions for new stops, too.
KaiserPro
Niantic are a number of people who are doing this. Its not that clear from the article, but niantic spatial are using the images captured from users to create a 3d model of "THE WORLD" or where people play pokemon go.
They have then fed that data into a more modern version of colmap (https://github.com/colmap/colmap) to create a point cloud. Then the engineering to make sure that point cloud is aligned accurately and automatically.
Once you have that point cloud aligned to the world, all you need is another image with some overlapping feature. Using simple trigonometry you can work out where the camera is from one picture
This is largely trivial to do for a few 100 sqaure meters. the hard part is doing it fast in at the city scale. Extracting a few thousand features from an image and then matching them against >billion other points is hard to do quickly, without some optimisations.
The thing that is not mentioned here is that data freshness is actually more important. Building change (advertising hoardings, paint jobs, logo changes, building remodelled etc) so the data goes stale. Its actually not that expensive anymore to just send your own people to scan areas. (A number of startups pre 2020 did it, mapillary provides a platform for it, although now owned by facebook)
The robots will be feeding that data back in to the map. the special sauce is updating the map without infringing patents, and doing it efficiently.
5-
see this 2007 talk: https://www.ted.com/talks/blaise_aguera_y_arcas_how_photosyn...
i remember this being available in google maps in 2008 or so. fun technology!
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vel0city
I remember playing with Photosynth on my Windows Phone. Good times.
rigrassm
Niantic has been doing this for a long time starting with Ingress. I've maybe done a handful of scans in PoGo but as others have mentioned the rewards were just not worth the trouble. The rewards for doing it in Ingress were much better (at least back in the day).
I'm more split on my feelings towards it these days given our current political/social climate but part of me still thinks the idea of mapping the real world in great detail is a worthy endeavor if it can be done "right". I'd probably be more inclined to support it if they would release the data or make it publicly accessible for others to use but it being tied to the whims of a corporation (even one that's been less shitty than most) makes it hard to get behind.
overfeed
> I'd probably be more inclined to support it if they would release the data or make it publicly accessible for others to use
Open Street Maps does exactly this, and could do with more volunteers and/or donations.
rigrassm
> Open Street Maps does exactly this, and could do with more volunteers and/or donations.
I've used osm in the past but haven't heard of them supporting AR style mapping submissions of points of interest, do you have any links to resources on that?
skeledrew
> if they would release the data or make it publicly accessible for others
HAH! Deep dreams.
rigrassm
> HAH! Deep dreams.
More of an inner reflection on what it would take for me to get behind it hence the last part of that statement lol.
>> but it being tied to the whims of a corporation (even one that's been less shitty than most) makes it hard to get behind
I wish I could elevate that scenario to the level of a dream lol
Aboutplants
At what point will we have people transmit their car dash cams along with GPS information in order to generate more data? I’m actually surprised this hasn’t happened yet with self driving car manufacturers needing more and more data
dawnerd
Tesla does it and clearly it’s not all that useful in reality.
KaiserPro
Thats because Tesla is useless, not because the data isn't valuable.
Tesla has explicitly ruled out using "HD maps" for autonomous vehicles. This means that all the data they have is going to not building maps, but building scenarios for testing its self driving models.
If you look at Wayve, they are building nerf maps to allow them to create scenarios for edge cases. all of that comes from the gathered data.
If you want to build visual navigation systems, you need lots of fresh data from all over. Seeding it with the data that naintic has is useful, but a lot of that data is out of date so not that useful anymore.
xnx
Not obvious if they're successfully selling any of their collected data yet, but they must at least have plans to try.
chaps
This.... absolutely already happens. It's trivial and cheap to purchase the three meter, three second resolution data of millions of vehicles.
hnburnsy
Maybe it could help find lost pets roaming the neighborhood
rangestransform
Mobileye builds their maps like this
jerlam
Great question. A "Ring Dashcam" with a mobile connection would win customers based on name recognition alone.
Not a lot of big companies in the dashcam market, there are a lot of alphabet companies and some small players like Vantrue. The only company with broader recognition is Garmin and it feels like a weird side gig for them.
BoorishBears
I don't think this is the worst thing trained.
Niantic builds massive geospatial models that can localize and reconstruct views: https://www.nianticspatial.com/
Extremely detailed mappings of CONUS with spatial intelligence already built around it, and we let the company get sold to Saudi government last year.
casey2
I wouldn't say "unknowingly" since stories like [0] have been posted for years/decades and people were given "free" internet (data) to play the game [1] . It's more that people just didn't give a shit. I'm sure there are new details about the usecases for the data, but not that data was collected unknowingly
[0] https://auth0.com/blog/2016/07/11/pokemon-go-catches-all-you... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12075477
[1] https://www.theverge.com/2016/7/14/12192752/t-mobile-pokemon... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12099159
LollipopYakuza
Despite the lack of transparency, is this so bad? Players are being given a game in exchange for collectively building a database.
xnorswap
It's the lack of transparency that is bad. PokemonGo did not make it clear it was taking (and uploading) pictures.
You could argue that "of course it must be for AR", but that isn't clear at all. The camera shows a live image before I take a photo, and I wouldn't expect a photo to be captured and sent if I didn't press the (virtual) shutter.
There are probably some cheap phones that do precisely that, and I'd be just as annoyed at them and raise the same concerns.
pavon
It isn't recording surreptitiously. The data was collected as part of an optional feature which is a very intentional process where you start a scan and then move around the object being scanned to get data from multiple angles, and then click to upload the data to Niantic. The uploading is called out specifically as a separate step (at least early on it was common for uploads to fail, so it had the option to save the scan to upload later when you had better signal). There is nothing secret about the fact that Niantic is collecting this data.
The lack of transparency is about how Niantic is using the data, selling it to third parties for purposes unrelated to the game. And I agree with the parent that this is a fair trade for a free game, especially since that part is optional, but more transparency would be better.
dawnerd
I recall there being a pretty obvious notice when they first ask if you want to participate. Whether people read it is another thing.
smegma2
The article doesn’t say when this collection happens but there is some part of the game the involves photographing specific landmarks which does involve pressing a shutter. I’m guessing that’s where this comes from but would be great to hear from a better source.
rasz
Database that will one day be used to program cruise missile.
RC_ITR
I'm not positive this was a secret (See: Reddit post about it from 2018):
https://www.reddit.com/r/TheSilphRoad/comments/8i7byi/pokemo...
atemerev
Pizza delivery robot, or a live grenade delivery robot, depending on the country and the dataset buyer.
tantalor
> crowdsourced data, seemingly collected for one purpose
> Whether players knew it or not, those scans were creating 3D models of the real world
Kind of shitty reporting. Did users know about this data collection or not? Was it not disclosed?
jeroenhd
The privacy policy was just a generic corporate "we may collect some information to improve a service" crap.
Technically, lawyers will argue that users had to opportunity to inform themselves.
Practically, nobody knew.
organsnyder
The quests themselves are prominently labeled "AR mapping". You don't need to go into the privacy policy to know what they are.
pavon
It is not at all clear that the mapping is for purposes other than the AR features in the game itself though. In fact Niantic advertised the scanning field research as helping them make richer experience at PokeStops (which they did).
Niantic was much more upfront about this with Ingress, so people who know the company's history will likely guess that Pokemon Go is serving the same purpose, but for someone coming into the game without that background, there is nothing in the game itself that indicates that data is being collected for other commercial purpose.
nijave
Yes. You had to enable AR scans, follow the prompts that tried to ensure they were quality (although lots of people just scanned the ground), then click a big green upload button. When completed, you were compensated with in-game items.
I think it was quite obvious they were harvesting data although lesser technical players maybe weren't.
What's less obvious is the fact they record all your location data for who-knows-what purposes.
rvnx
Looks like teenagers are going to have fun playing Pokemon Go, and now have faster food deliveries.
It's useful to map the world, this is what Google / Baidu / Yandex Maps are doing too.
johannes1234321
It is indeed useful.
The question is how one stands on the monopolistic collection by a commercial entity.
I personally don't mind to share GPS traces and other data with i.e. open streetmap, as I directly benefit from the data as well and it's more or less equal between different entities.
I try not to give too much to Google and similar companies as this increases their competitive advantage, while my benefit is small.
JakeStone
Not unexpected, but it looks the oldest kid, Ingress, is being ignored again. IIRC, there was some badge you could earn by doing a number of those scans.
Or is Ingress even still around?
pchew
They were(are?) the same backend, same world maps, same POIs. Maybe they diversified at some point but at launch the Gyms were 1 to 1 with Ingress portals in my city.
It is interesting that the 'non-gaming' division of the split kept Ingress.
Lockal
When I played it (it was invitation-based, but it was not difficult to get an invitation), there was nothing related to photo. Pure GPS-based navigation (including "helicopter" players). No idea if it includes AR features now.
rigrassm
The OG was alive and kicking when I hopped back on a year and a half ago. No where near what it used to have as far as active players go but in my big city area there are still lots of active OGs and new people hopping on.
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I like Pokemon Go and play almost every day. I did this scan one time and then stopped. The rewards are not worth the hassle. I don't think many players are doing it. It's just very weird to stand somewhere and scan an object.
I also wouldn't say 'unknowingly trained', it's pretty obvious what it does, and I think the game even tells you that they want to understands how the POI looks like in 3D.