Massive Robotics

New Zealand software company Massive, famous for its on-screen swarms of pillaging orcs in The Lord of the Rings trilogy, recently showcased new business potential in Hanover, Germany. This included engineering, architecture and robotics. Software used in The Rings enabled characters the ability to react to their surroundings based on sight, touch and hearing. When scaled into a crowd, the characters interacted with each other, creating a more realistic result. Massive now sees this software being used for safe-building design, disaster scenarios, traffic and municipal planning, and possibly for scientific research into the behaviour of species. Massive CEO Diane Holland said it is unclear how many markets the company’s technology could serve. “If you can accurately simulate what we as human beings think and do, [the possibilities are] absolutely endless,” she said.