Colocate: A Collective Area Network

Colocate is a peer-to-peer based 3D spatial user experience system that puts privacy at the forefront for its users.

Colocate was made to seamlessly blend the spatial experience between the indoor and outdoor in our built environment. It allows users to have agency over their privacy policies — with a single time setup, users can choose to create, govern and share their data at their will, an option that currently does not exist within the wayfinding ecosystem in the world today.

Using cutting-edge ultra-wide band based spatial localisation, each peer network creates its own network closed off from a single point of governance. This method creates the opportunity for data and infrastructure redundancy at a very low cost of entry. Built on the idea of decentralised and collective decision making, Colocate creates a collective area network that only communicates as far as its network's proximity and hardware capability.

Each user creates a social and economic-based network and uses this network and its spatial schema to geolocate themselves within that network. It is a social method of locating, sharing and creating spatial experiences.

Colocate sensors exist ubiquitously in our devices today — some companies have their own names for this chip (Apple calls it the U1 chip, present in iPhones and AirTags). Colocate utilises this existing infrastructure to create a spatial method of social networks. Each user may have more than one network and each network has its own rules on privacy and localisation.

Our world is rapidly urbanising at a speed and scale where we have subterrestrial networks to large massing structures to autonomous vehicles. Current systems like Maps will not be able to meet the needs of the future of computing our built environment and will need ways of augmenting how we interact with it. Colocate is a step towards that future.