Mercuna is excited to announce that we have been awarded an Epic MegaGrant to help fund the development of our new off-road navigation middleware for vehicle and animal AI.
Epic MegaGrants is a scheme run by Epic Games, who have committed $100 million to support game developers, enterprise professionals, media and entertainment creators, students, educators, and tool developers doing amazing things with Unreal Engine. Our grant will enable us to take our innovative new vehicle and animal navigation solution and develop it into a fully featured navigation system.
Navigation for animals and vehicles is an area of AI which has long been neglected. Traditional character navigation solutions don’t work for animals and vehicles as they don’t take into account the limits of their turning rates or accelerations. Our new kinematic pathfinding approach allows us to consider the AI’s movement while the path is being constructed, allowing for smooth paths to be created through navigable space.
We have built an early version of the software which can successfully race cars round tracks and guide animals through forests. The Epic MegaGrant will allow us to build this into a full solution, making it flexible and robust for use in AAA games while adding all the extra features we know that our customers need. We’re excited that this funding will allow us to take off-road AI navigation to the next level.
Mercuna Off-Road will be available for licencing from summer 2020 and will complement our successful Mercuna 3D Navigation middleware. Get in touch if you’d like any more information.