Different systems can keep their own maps, coordinates, and internal IDs. Once an entity is grounded, 4D-ID gives them a shared way to refer to the same persistent thing. Grounding determines the referent; localization determines where it is; 4D-ID preserves which thing it is across systems and time.
4D-ID does not perform perception, localization, geometric registration, or rendering. Observations remain evidence, external matchers supply correspondence evidence, and authorized lifecycle decisions preserve reconciliation history.
Identities can be shared, while each deployment controls what it discloses and authorizes.
▶ Try the isolated demos at 4d-id.org — a browser sandbox of records created from caller-supplied grounding. Nothing there writes to a live namespace.
This profile describes a candidate open standard. It has no claimed industry adoption, standards-body adoption, or production deployment.
| Repo | What it is |
|---|---|
| spec | The specification. Six parts, ~100 requirements, each with a test. Start here. |
| reference-resolver | A resolver you can run in an afternoon. Apache-2.0. |
| js-sdk | The TypeScript / JavaScript client. npm i @4d-id/js. |
| demos | The interactive browser demos. |
| adapters | The IFC adapter is implemented; ROS 2 tf2, glTF, 3D Tiles, and OpenXR remain planned. |
| conformance | Conformance diagnostics: exactly 15 schema-level checks pass; functional work continues. |
Identity, hierarchy, pose, time. Every other clause is a rule about how those four behave under a named pressure, or a binding to a standard that already exists (OGC GeoPose and DGGS, ISO 8601, OpenXR, glTF). 4D-ID is not a new coordinate system; it is the name that lets the ones we have agree.
The specification is a candidate open standard, not an adopted standard. A 4D-ID can be syntactically generated from caller-supplied grounding and a descriptor; that syntax is not identity truth. The reference resolver has no built-in authentication, so production deployments must enforce authorization policy around lifecycle operations.
Apache-2.0 for the implementation, SDKs, schemas, and conformance suite.