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OpenFLAME: A Federated Spatial Naming Infrastructure

Authors Sagar Bharadwaj , Ziyong Ma , Ivan Liang , Michael Farb , Anthony Rowe , Srinivasan Seshan

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Subject Classification

ACM Subject Classification
  • Computer systems organization → Distributed architectures
  • Networks → Naming and addressing
Keywords
  • Geographic naming system
  • Augmented reality
  • Robotics

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Abstract

Spatial applications, i.e., applications that tie digital information with the physical world, have improved many of our daily activities, such as navigation and ride-sharing. This class of applications also holds significant promise of enabling new industries such as augmented reality and robotics. The development of these applications is enabled by a system that can resolve real-world locations to names, or a spatial naming system. Today, mapping platforms provided by organizations like Google and Apple serve as spatial naming systems. These maps are centralized and primarily cover outdoor spaces. We envision that future spatial applications, such as persistent world-scale augmented reality, would require detailed and precise spatial data across indoor and outdoor spaces. The scale of cartography efforts required to survey indoor spaces and their privacy needs inhibit existing centralized maps from incorporating such spaces into their platform.
In this paper, we present the design and implementation of OpenFLAME, a federated spatial naming system, or in other words, a federated mapping infrastructure. OpenFLAME enables independent parties to manage and serve their own maps of physical regions. This unlocks scalability of map management, isolation, and privacy of maps. The discovery system that identifies maps hosted at a given location is a primary component of OpenFLAME. We implement OpenFLAME on top of the existing Domain Name System (DNS), which enables us to leverage its existing infrastructure. We implement map services such as address-to-location mapping, routing, and localization on top of our federated mapping infrastructure.

Cite As Get BibTex

Sagar Bharadwaj, Ziyong Ma, Ivan Liang, Michael Farb, Anthony Rowe, and Srinivasan Seshan. OpenFLAME: A Federated Spatial Naming Infrastructure. In 1st New Ideas in Networked Systems (NINeS 2026). Open Access Series in Informatics (OASIcs), Volume 139, pp. 20:1-20:26, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2026) https://doi.org/10.4230/OASIcs.NINeS.2026.20

Author Details

Sagar Bharadwaj
  • Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, USA
Ziyong Ma
  • Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, USA
Ivan Liang
  • Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, USA
Michael Farb
  • Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, USA
Anthony Rowe
  • Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, USA
Srinivasan Seshan
  • Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, USA

Funding

This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. CNS-1956095. Any opinion, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

Supplementary Materials

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