INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
“Whether for AR or robots, anytime you have software interacting with the world, it needs a 3D model of the globe. We think that map
will look a lot more like the decentralized internet than a version of Apple Maps or Google Maps.” That’s the idea behind new startup
Fantasmo, according to co-founder Jameson Detweiler
Coming out of stealth today, Fantasmo wants to let any developer contribute to and draw from a sub-centimeter accuracy map for robot
navigation or anchoring AR experiences.Fantasmo plans to launch a free Camera Positioning Standard (CPS) that developers can use to collect
and organize 3D mapping data
The startup will charge for commercial access and premium features in its TerraOS, an open-sourced operating system that helps property
owners keep their maps up to date and supply them for use by robots, AR and other software equipped with Fantasmo’s SDK.With $2 million in
funding led by TenOneTen Ventures, Fantasmo is now accepting developers and property owners to its private beta.Directly competing with
Google’s own Visual Positioning System is an audacious move
Fantasmo is betting that private property owners won’t want big corporations snooping around to map their indoor spaces, and instead will
want to retain control of this data so they can dictate how it’s used
With Fantasmo, they’ll be able to map spaces themselves and choose where robots can roam or if the next Pokémon GO can be played
there.“Only Apple, Google, and HERE Maps want this centralized. If this data sits on one of the big tech company’s servers, they could
basically spy on anyone at any time,” says Detweiler
The prospect gets scarier when you imagine everyone wearing camera-equipped AR glasses in the future
“The AR cloud on a central server is Big Brother
It’s the end of privacy.”Detweiler and his co-founder Dr
Ryan Measel first had the spark for Fantasmo as best friends at Drexel University
“We need to build Pokémon in real life! That was the genesis of the company,” says Detweiler
In the meantime he founded and sold LaunchRock, a 500 Startups company for creating “Coming Soon” sign-up pages for internet
services.After Measel finished his PhD, the pair started Fantasmo Studios to build augmented reality games like Trash Collectors From Space,
which they took through the Techstars accelerator in 2015
“Trash Collectors was the first time we actually created a spatial map and used that to sync multiple people’s precise position up,”
But while building the infrastructure tools to power the game, they realized there was a much bigger opportunity to build the underlying
maps for everyone’s games
Now the Santa Monica-based Fantasmo has 11 employees.“It’s the internet of the real world,” says Detweiler
Fantasmo now collects geo-referenced photos, scans them for identifying features like walls and objects, and imports them into its point
Apps and robots equipped with the Fantasmo SDK can then pull in the spatial map for a specific location that’s more accurate than
That lets them peg AR objects to precise spots in your environment while making sure robots don’t run into things.Fantasmo identifies
objects in geo-referenced photos to build a 3D model of the world“I think this is the most important piece of infrastructure to be built
during the next decade,” Detweiler declares
That potential attracted funding from TenOneTen, Freestyle Capital, LDV, NoName Ventures, Locke Mountain Ventures and some angel investors
But it’s also attracted competitors like Escher Reality, which was acquired by Pokémon GO parent company Niantic, and Ubiquity6, which
has investment from top-tier VCs like Kleiner Perkins and First Round.Google is the biggest threat, though
With its industry-leading traditional Google Maps, experience with indoor mapping through Tango, new VPS initiative and near limitless
Just yesterday, Google showed off using an AR fox in Google Maps that you can follow for walking directions.Fantasmo is hoping that
Google’s size works against it
The startup sees a path to victory through interoperability and privacy
The big corporations want to control and preference their own platforms’ access to maps while owning the data about private property
Fantasmo wants to empower property owners to oversee that data and decide what happens to it
Measel concludes, “The world would be worse off if GPS was proprietary
The next evolution shouldn’t be any different.”
