Our Investment in Fantasmo

At the core of some of today’s most transformative technologies you’ll find the convergence of the digital and physical worlds. Robotics, augmented reality (AR), and connected devices each interpret and synthesize data, then use that data to interact with their surroundings. These technologies rely on various sensors to understand what is taking place in their immediate vicinity, but they typically lack an in depth understanding of the full environment.

As a result, application developers have been limited by what they can build for these technologies. With today’s sensors alone, it would be nearly impossible to navigate an autonomous robot to a specific product in a large retail store or for an AR character run and hide behind a tree in a park. Those tasks need a more sophisticated portrayal of the environment. In short, they need a map. But a traditional 2D map won’t cut it, pulling off those types of tasks requires a detailed 3D spatial map.

We’re proud to announce our investment in Fantasmo, a company enabling the next generation of products and services that merge digital capabilities with the real world. Fantasmo does this by providing and end-to-end platform for creating, storing, and sharing detailed 3D spatial maps of public and private spaces. They are pushing toward a world where when a device enters into an environment for the first time, it will have complete awareness of its surroundings. It will also recognize exactly where it is within that space, down to the centimeter.

When we first met the founders, Jameson Detweiler and Ryan Measel, they talked to us about how this data set will unlock the next phase of innovation. Rather than talking about hypothetical use cases 5 to 10 years out, they were interested in supporting the demand that exists today. Many owners of popular destinations, from local malls and museums to stadiums and theme parks, were already thinking about creating 3D maps of their own spaces. While some of the largest tech companies in the world are eager to map those spaces for those property owners, the most forward thinking are reluctant to give away their digital representation so easily.

Everyone understands the value of a physical property. We intuitively know a mall owner, for example, wouldn’t let just anyone put up a big advertisement in the middle of their mall. As it turns out, many property owners (rightfully) feel the same sense of ownership about that mall’s digital representation. They would not want an AR ad popping up in their property unless they permitted it to be there. An owner must own their own data in order to maintain control of how a map of their property will be used.

Before Fantasmo, there were major challenges with owning your 3D spatial map. The first is maintaining an updated map. Changes as simple as moving a retail display fixture could result in having to recreate an entire map, which could be quite costly. The second problem is these maps were typically created to serve one specific use case, so the map would usually be in a format inaccessible and unusable by 3rd party developers.

Fantasmo is an open source solution that simultaneously solves the ownership, maintenance, and access challenges for property owners. Owners can easily provision developers to access their 3D spatial maps in a usable format which will open the door to innovation. Applications will be created that can enhance operations and the visitor experience in ways the owner would have never considered.

The same applies to cities and municipalities enabling applications in public spaces. Broad utilization of these maps have implications for everything from transportation and logistics to public safety. It will quickly become nearly impossible to be considered a Smart City without the use of these types of maps.

At TenOneTen, we have a proud history of operating and investing in location data and mapping companies. We expect that detailed 3D maps will become some of the most important data sets of the next decade. Fantasmo is quickly advancing toward their grand vision of mapping the entire world and keeping it updated in near real time. We’re excited to be along for the ride!