UCL computer vision spin-out acquired by Niantic Inc

UCL spin-out Matrix Mill Ltd, a company specialising in applying artificial intelligence and machine vision research to solve industry problems, has been acquired by Niantic Labs Inc., an augmented reality (AR) technology company famous for the mobile game phenomenon Pokémon Go. Matrix Mill was co-founded by Dr Gabriel Brostow (UCL Computer Science) with two of his team, Dr Michael Firman and Dr Daniyar Turmukhambetov, following years of pioneering research into building and perfecting deep neural networks that can infer information about the surrounding world, from one or more cameras. Niantic also acquired patented technology developed in Dr Brostow's lab by PhD candidate Clément Godard and Dr Oisin Mac Aodha (Caltech, previously at UCL) which allows for depth perception using a regular single camera. They have continued with further innovations and publications, as consultants to Matrix Mill. The technology redefines how machines see and understand the 3D world, and more importantly, how digital objects can interact with real elements. Now integrating with the Niantic R&D and Art teams, Matrix Mill is pushing the boundaries of what machines can infer about the world, to help millions of users experience better AR.