Players of Pokémon Go have been quietly helping build navigation tech that's now heading into military drones, and most of them had no idea. Since 2021, players scanning locations in the game for rewards created around 30 billion photos and videos of real streets, Niantic used all that player data to train a camera system that can figure out exactly where something is just by looking at its surroundings. In December 2025, Niantic's mapping spin-off teamed up with a U.S. defense company called Vantor. They're combining this ground camera tech with drone systems so military drones and robots can navigate in places where GPS gets blocked Players gave Niantic permission to use their scans through the game's rules, but almost nobody knew it could lead to military drone navigation.