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Let’s open our own grocery store!
The suggestion, not as left-field as you might expect, after all, how many offices have a model supermarket inside, triggered a discussion. What if we did open our own store and ran it as a testing ground for Cactus, our spatial AI solution for retail?
The upsides are obvious, we could move faster and implement experiments faster than with any client.
It would allow us to test the limits of what is possible at the cutting edge of spatial computing, AI and retail.
While the Auki mad scientists get the ball rolling on the AukiMart, the discussion that followed did highlight one important aspect of this experiment. To understand the Auki Network and related apps, there is no replacement for direct or indirect experience of setting up an Auki domain.
The technology, complicated when talking implications or details on macro and micro levels, becomes so much easier to grasp in practice. We have made a lot of changes in the past months to streamline the user experience: it has never been easier to create your own digital reproduction of a physical space.
Join us as we set up the AukiMart in a new series of blog posts taking you through every step of the process, introducing all the concepts and technology underlying the Auki Network and serving as a springboard to deeper dives into recent developments.
Before we can get started, we need to establish how the Auki Network functions and the fundamental role the domain plays.
The domain is a digital representation of a physical environment and includes information about that physical environment which makes it understandable to and navigable by devices and AI.
This includes:
Occlusion volumes in particular are key for immersive AR experiences since they allow for the correct layering of digital assets so they aren’t visible from behind physical objects. We will explore these concepts in more detail in the second blog post in this series.
The domain is essentially the map and as such is fundamental to the spatial functions of the Auki Network, such as persistent AR experiences and navigation. In the case of the AukiMart, the domain would be a representation of our store with all the shelves, walkable aisles and other fixtures included.
Note: Decentralized Domains
One unique aspect of the Auki Network is that the domain is owned by the domain owner, it does not belong to Auki or any other centralized authority. You have control of your own domain and can make it public or private, choose to self-host your domain or host it on the cloud.
DMT is how you manage and set up your domain. You can access DMT with a smartphone using the DMT app or through our webDMT interface. Within DMT you can create or edit your domain and the occlusion volumes and navigation meshes, or navmeshes, within. A key part of how this is done is through capturing, or mapping, your domain.
Given how fundamental the domain is to the Auki Network, a good user experience in DMT is crucial. Setting up, capturing and editing your domain needs to be as seamless as possible, enabling users to get started with other exciting applications as soon as possible.
Before we can start working with navmeshes or occlusions in our store, we need to capture the domain. This creates the foundational spatial map of the space and an associated coordinate system over which we can layer information such as navmeshes and occlusions. Let’s begin by looking at how we would capture our store to understand how this works.
Central to the domain are portals, QR codes that have known poses inside the domain and are used by visiting devices as entry and calibration points. In this case, my coworkers have fixed the portals around our store, so I can get started by beginning a recording in the DMT app and capturing a portal.
I then move around the store capturing as much of my surroundings as possible through my smart phone’s sensors. DMT will use the camera feed to show you what you are capturing in real time and give instant feedback using an easy to understand dot-based UI.
As I move through the store, I make sure to capture any portals I pass, adding them to the recording. When I am ready to end the recording, I simply click the record button.
Scaling Up: Multiple Users and Recordings
As you can see from the above, capturing a domain is quite simple from a user’s perspective, however domains allow for multiple captures by multiple different users and devices to be combined into a single, unified spatial dataset, a necessity for any commercial application.
How does this work? In simple terms, each recording has its own portals and coordinate systems, until the portals overlap. At that point the recordings are merged and newer recordings are merged with the older recordings, which are considered canonical. This process continues until the whole space has been mapped and all the recordings have been merged.
Being able to handle multiple users and recordings is necessary for domains to be scalable and viable for business use. Whereas most applications can only be rolled out one location at a time, Auki network domains can be installed in hundreds or even thousands of locations at once. In a future post we will look at the changes we have made to DMT, how they have improved the mapping of domains and the implications for business applications.
Now that we have the domain mapped for the AukiMart, the next step will be adding walkable areas, shelves and other occlusions. I hope you will join me in the next AukiMart post to see how some simple meshes transform the domain into a space that is understandable to AI and devices.
Auki is building the posemesh, a decentralized machine perception network for the next 100 billion people, devices and AI on Earth and beyond. The posemesh is an external and collaborative sense of space that machines and AI can use to understand the physical world.
Our mission is to improve civilization’s intercognitive capacity; our ability to think, experience and solve problems together with each other and AI. The greatest way to extend human reach is to collaborate with others. We are building consciousness-expanding technology to reduce the friction of communication and bridge minds.
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The Posemesh is an open-source protocol that powers a decentralized, blockchain-based spatial computing network.
The Posemesh is designed for a future where spatial computing is both collaborative and privacy-preserving. It limits any organization's surveillance capabilities and encourages sovereign ownership of private maps of personal and public spaces.
The decentralization also offers a competitive advantage, especially in shared spatial computing sessions, AR for example, where low latency is crucial. The posemesh is the next step in the decentralization movement, responding as an antidote to the growing power of big tech.
The Posemesh has tasked Auki Labs with developing the software infrastructure of the posemesh.
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