Research & Development

VT MÄK is dedicated to advancing the state of modeling and simulation. We maintain an active R&D group that works towards new and exciting developments in the Link, Simulate, Visualize and Terrain areas. Building on our expertise and the solid base of our COTS products, we provide customers with innovative solutions to challenging distributed simulation topics.

High Fidelity Modeling

MÄK works with our customers to develop high fidelity models and modeling environments for many different domains. These include increasing the fidelity of VR-Forces dynamics models using physics-based modeling approaches and developing realistic sensor modeling. We have also worked on improved terrain reasoning models.

Current research is focused on entity-based, large scale, high-fidelity simulation capabilities using a cloud computing environment. We want to increase entity counts without sacrificing the model fidelity. We are also extending our communications effects capabilities to the cyber warfare domain, developing models that show the effects of offensive and defensive cyber operations on the battlefield. Let MÄK help you build and integrate high fidelity models into your simulation environment.

Human Behavior Representation

MÄK has a long history of applied research and development in human behaviors for simulation. VR-Forces has been used with many cognitive modeling and expert systems, including SOAR and ACT-R, to provide realistic automated threats and teammates for virtual and constructive simulation environments. In a research project for PEO STRI, we have developed a behavior representation system based on the Subsumption Architecture work from the robotics world, which has allowed us to build behaviors more rapidly than before.

We are using some of the best artificial intelligence work to come out of the game world for human behaviors, including the Kynapse based B-HAVE plug-in for VR-Forces. We are also researching some of the very latest gaming AI techniques, such as behavior trees, to increase the realism of simulated players. MÄK will continue to work with the human behavior community to develop and incorporate new representations and behavior systems, providing increased realism and decision making capabilities to our simulated entities.

Advanced Visualization

MÄK is a leader in visualization research and development for synthetic environments. Not only do our products provide two and three dimensional views of the environment, but they also provide visualization of non-visual information. MÄK applications incorporate visualization techniques that help you examine and analyse your synthetic environment. These include infrared, thermal, and night vision views to sensor volumes, target/shooter pairings, and exaggerated reality views for command and control.

Our past visualization research and development has included simulated annealing techniques for icon de-cluttering, Bayesian approaches for visualizing uncertainty, and advanced display management techniques for command and control. MÄK has pioneered the use of GIS data directly by constructive simulations, for both visualization and terrain reasoning. We provide simulation products that use the cloud to bring vast amounts of terrain and imagery data to visualization and simulation applications, providing a new paradigm for terrain data that bypasses the traditional terrain database generation approach.

Future visualization research may focus on using procedural terrain for simulation, visualization of cyber warfare and network centric battlefield effects, and the use of GIS data directly for 3D visualization. Look to MÄK to help you with your advanced visualization requirements.