Kiwi Software firm Massive Software is getting into the virtual robot business. The key to Massive’s success is their 3D animation rendering software used in Lord of the Rings, Golden Compass and the Pirates of the Caribbean among many others.

The 3D rendering software allows filmmakers to realistically create virtual scenes using predefined or customer characteristics quickly and “easily”. For example in explosions, how the blast expands based on the environment such as buildings, trees etc.

Massive intends to take the software and apply it to real life simulations, for example being able to map traffic realistically. Remember those annoying holdups on the motorway, and by the time you get there it is gone. This concertina effect can be modeled using this software to predict truly realistic traffic flows and show ways to build or improve roading, without have to test and hope.

This form of artificial intelligence allows a far more accurate rendering of senarios in an large scale infrastructure progress, from aircraft building military battlefield simulations.

Massive contains some very sophisticated AI techniques including many multiples of independent units (Agents) acting in time and space.

Massive also employs fuzzy logic to make characters’ reactions more natural “than the on/off robotic results of binary logic,” the company’s Web site notes, as well as “rigid body dynamics,” which the site describes as “a physics-based approach to facilitating realistic stunt motion such as falling, animation of accessories, and projectiles.”

Massive claims it can run simulations using hundreds of thousands of simple agents. “Large numbers of more complex agents, such as typical humanoid agents, can be done in multiple passes, by simulating agents in groups of about 10,000 to 20,000, with each subsequent group able to see and react to the previously simulated groups,” its site states.

Massive was founded when Stephen Regelous programmed a unique piece of software for director Peter Jackson to make creation of complicated visual effects scenes involving hundreds of thousands of digital characters a practical reality. As an off shoot of the work on Lord of the Rings, it is now a standalone company.

You can find them here.