Rancho Cordova digital twin

Rancho Cordova is a city of about 85,000 people in the Greater Sacramento region.¹ In January the city and the Human Machine Collaboration Institute (HMCI) launched AiR Rancho Cordova, a programme to grow a local AI and robotics economy.¹ The city put $5 million into it over three years.¹

The twin is the base layer of that programme.¹ Over a few days in the summer of 2026 Niantic Spatial flew drones over the city's Innovation Region, about four square kilometres, and reconstructed it in 3D.¹ Niantic says the model is detailed enough to read a building sign and measure the width of a street.¹ HMCI already runs traffic simulations on the model.¹ Capturing the rest of the city is the announced next step.¹

Three groups are meant to share the model.¹ Robotics companies get a real street to test on before they deploy.¹ Researchers at UC Davis and Sacramento State get a common dataset.¹ City staff can walk stakeholders through a proposed change, or try a traffic scenario without closing a lane.¹

Niantic argues that drone capture and automated reconstruction have made a city twin affordable for a mid-sized place, where it used to take years of survey work.¹ The announcement gives no price for the capture and does not say whether the model or its data will be open.¹