Archive for the 'XEAI' Category

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Jack Thompson Disbarred… World Celebrates!

It is a happy day for the video game community as psycho-lawyer Jack Thompson has finally been disbarred!

Read the story on Kotaku

Oh happy day!!

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How Videogames Are Made: Enter the Donut

This short on how video games are made was done by the old EAI crew back in 1998. It is just as relevant now as it was then!

Enter The Donut: The Video Game Production Process

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New Big Dog Video

New video from Boston Dynamics:

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The Robot Menagerie (part 2)

Continued from: The Robot Menagerie (part 1)

Mowgli is a robot being developed by The School of Interdisciplinary Information Studies at the University of Tokyo and the Intelligent Systems Research Institute (AIST) in Japan. This interesting “frogbot” (if you will) uses a pneumatic muscular system to make incredibly smooth jumps and landings. See for yourself:

RobopThe BBC reports that various cities are installing robotic falcons to scare off pigeons. These devices called “Robops” are made by a company named likewise.

Robops’ company website has a strange look and feel. Rather than learning about robotic pigeon-terrorizing systems, it seems more like you are reading a mystery novel. Check it out: Robops.co.uk

Boston Dynamics, maker of “BigDog” (aka the Robot Mule), has a prototype of an exploration robot that they call “Little Dog.” Check out the video:

The same company is also working on a bug-like climbing robot called Rise:

Ryomei Engineering Co., Ltd, a subsidiary of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd. develops a variety of engineering and environmental control machinery and, in their spare time develop robot fish. Check out their robotic koi:

Stanford is working on a line of roach-inspired locomotion systems called Sprawl Robots” . Their website hasn’t been updated since 2006 but they did note that they last had a Sprawl running at 15 body-lengths a second!

This isn’t an animal but it is the undercarriage of a JPL Mars Rover platform…and in this video it is driving over XEAI regular Miss Jennifer!

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XEAI, this is the world. World, this is XEAI

Since 1999, XEAI has been working quietly behind the scenes to keep some of the best creative minds of the game, CG, and a few other industries from getting any work done. This secret society has been sharing stupid links, discussing politics and religion, and mostly just wasting time.

Of course, periodically, a key morsel of critical info has been shared…maybe a behind-the-scenes peek at the inner workings of the most important companies in the business…maybe just some weird bit of super useful advice. It happens here.

XEAI has grown over the years to include people outside of the aforementioned game/CG businesses. We welcome creatives, technologists, and anyone that loves (or is loved by) robots.

This is the public blog of our private forum and where we will be sharing some of our materials. At this time, membership to our forum is by invitation or referral only. In the future we will be adding a section so that qualified applicants can seek membership.

Enjoy.

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