How do we define reality? “If you think about it, the communal experience of reality is what separates it from a dream,” observes Nils Pihl, CEO of Hong Kong-based Spatial Computing startup Auki Labs. “Because we experience it together, because we see it together, we can trust that it’s really there.”
Pihl and his team are actively working on several technologies to create a kind of shared digital tapestry, one that enables devices to securely and privately exchange spatial data and computing power to establish a common understanding of physical space. With this shared comprehension, Auki Labs believes it can equip machines and AI with something they have always lacked: spatial awareness.
A DePIN for AI Perception
Central to this vision is the posemesh, a decentralized physical infrastructure network (DePIN) that allows participants and apps to locate each other and form domain clusters, private peer networks that facilitate spatial data exchange. Domain owners are then free to provide their ‘maps’ to visiting devices and earn rewards for doing so. At the same time, the network’s Relay Service enables users to pledge their spare computational power and bandwidth in return for tokens.
Instead of a limited, centralized 2D canvas of the world like Google Maps, the posemesh represents a decentralized collaborative network of privately-owned maps, with blockchain handling the rewards and reputation model that incentivizes participation and ensures bad behavior is punished.
It is natural to wonder whether creating a decentralized machine perception network is a venture any of us should really be undertaking: we’ve all seen Terminator 2: Judgment Day, right? The entire sci-fi dystopia genre signposts danger ahead when we attempt to endow machines with humanistic properties.
However, granting AI an understanding of physical space is the logical next step in the coming age of smart cities and interconnected devices. Ensuring this process is funded, owned, and operated by the people is infinitely more appealing than handing de facto control to greedy corporations or governments.
Moreover, a machine perception network addresses the shortcomings of GPS technology, which often fails in densely populated areas – have you ever tried to use Google Maps in the warren-like streets of Venice? With autonomous cars and delivery drones on the way, we need to solve the spatial AI problem, and fast.
This sense of urgency is not lost on the Auki Labs team: its DePIN is live, and nodes operated by individuals and organizations actively contribute to its sprawling real-world global network coverage. Its native token, meanwhile, is set to launch at the end of June.
Augmented Reality IRL
Teaching AI spatial navigation skills isn’t the only use case of the posemesh DePIN, incidentally. Auki’s software development kit (SDK) ConjureKit enables developers to create apps for the network, such as those that leverage domains to create a shared Augmented Reality experience for users.
Imagine, for example, a persistent AR experience being created for attendees of the annual Wimbledon tennis tournament: with the London All England Lawn Tennis Club mapped to the posemesh, visitors could encounter various interactive elements during their time on the grounds, combining the joy of watching a live sporting spectacle with the reality-defying pleasure of, say, conversing with holograms of former champions. Hell, it might even be possible to play a set of tennis with a great player from the past.
The popularization of shared Augmented Reality experiences may well portend the death of the traditional digital display, inviting users into an alternate AR world where the limits of physical reality simply don’t apply.
It’s likely these experiences will increasingly be navigable via wearable technology – which underlines the importance of decentralization. If you thought social media data capture was insidious, imagine if a corporation could monitor your physical movements while literally seeing your eyeballs.
Mapping the physical world will be no mean feat, but Auki Labs are nothing if not ambitious. If their vision to turn digital devices into ad-hoc distributed spatial computers comes to pass, our very perception of reality could be forever altered. Let’s just hope the machines don’t gain sentience as well as proprioception.
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay
