The internet made information browsable. The Auki network makes the physical world browsable.
Each physical space — a warehouse, a hospital ward, a retail floor — is a Domain: a named coordinate system owned and operated by whoever built it. Domains are to the real world what websites are to the internet. They are privately owned, independently operated, and linked together by a shared protocol. Operationally, a Domain is a scene graph: typed nodes (frames, sensors, clocks) connected by transform edges, served by a designated Map.
Devices visit Domains, contribute what they know, and take away what they need. No single authority sees everything. No single map contains the whole world. This is the real world web.
The Auki protocol is a collaborative spatial computing protocol. It exists to let any node answer four questions about any other node:
Every node lives in its own coordinate system. A phone, a robot, and a cloud server each have their own notion of "here." The SDK bridges these with convert_pose — mapping a pose from one coordinate system to another, with automatic convention correction.
Domains provide the spatial scaffolding. A Domain is a local coordinate system with a canonical map. When a node joins another Domain's cluster, it doesn't replace its own Domain — it builds a bridge. The SDK holds a SpatialTransform between the two, and convert_pose crosses that bridge on demand. A node can participate in many clusters simultaneously, accumulating transforms and maps, while always remaining grounded in its own coordinate system.
Every node has its own clock. Sensors sample at different rates, messages arrive with different delays, and no two clocks agree on what "now" means. The SDK bridges these with convert_time — mapping a timestamp from one clock to another.
The SDK holds a TimeTransform between each pair of connected clocks, and convert_time crosses that bridge on demand — just like convert_pose does for space.
When nodes gather around a Domain, they form a Domain Cluster — a group of peers that know about each other, can communicate privately, and can find the right peer for a given task.
Every cluster has a Manager that maintains a shared registry of members and their capabilities, and a Map that stores and serves the canonical map of the space. These roles are often the same machine, but they don't have to be.
A device discovers a Domain by encountering an identifier in the physical world — a QR code, a MAC address, or any other registered uid — and querying the Discovery Service. The Discovery Service returns the address of the Domain's Manager. The device authenticates with the Manager, joins the cluster, and begins participating.