MAK Technologies, formerly doing business as VT MAK, Inc. is a software company based in

Cambridge, Massachusetts Cambridge ( ) is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. It is a suburb in the Greater Boston metropolitan area, located directly across the Charles River from Boston. The city's population as of the 2020 United States census, ...

that provides

commercial off-the-shelf Commercial-off-the-shelf or commercially available off-the-shelf (COTS) products are packaged or canned (ready-made) hardware or software, which are adapted aftermarket to the needs of the purchasing organization, rather than the commissioning of ...

(COTS) modeling and simulation software. The company develops and sells software for distributed simulations that system integrators, governments, and research institutions use to build and populate 3D simulated environments. Users include medical, aerospace, defense, and transportation industries. In addition to offering COTS software, MAK provides the following services:

simulation A simulation is an imitative representation of a process or system that could exist in the real world. In this broad sense, simulation can often be used interchangeably with model. Sometimes a clear distinction between the two terms is made, in ...

content creation, software customization,

interoperability Interoperability is a characteristic of a product or system to work with other products or systems. While the term was initially defined for information technology or systems engineering services to allow for information exchange, a broader de ...

, research and development, and training.

History

MAK Technologies was founded in 1990. In 2006 the company was acquired by Vision Technologies Systems, Inc. ( VT Systems). In 2009 MAK began doing business as (d.b.a.) VT MAK to reflect the branding of the parent company. In 2019 the parent company was renamed ST Engineering North America. In 2020 MAK dropped the d.b.a. VT MAK and returned to doing business as MAK Technologies, a company of ST Engineering North America. MAK has contributed significantly to SISO interoperability standards including the High-Level Architecture ( HLA) RPRFOM and the Web Live Virtual Constructive (WebLVC) simulation initiative. In 2013, MAK acquired DI-Guy. Formerly a business segment of

Boston Dynamics Boston Dynamics, Inc., is an American engineering and robotics design company founded in 1992 as a Research spin-off, spin-off from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Headquartered in Waltham, Massachusetts, Boston Dynamics has been owne ...

, DI-Guy develops software tools for real-time human visualization, simulation and

artificial intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is the capability of computer, computational systems to perform tasks typically associated with human intelligence, such as learning, reasoning, problem-solving, perception, and decision-making. It is a field of re ...

Technology

MAK Technologies develops

COTS COTS may refer to: * Commercial off-the-shelf, products that are commercially available and can be bought "as is" * Commercial Orbital Transportation Services, a NASA program for delivery to the International Space Station by private companies * ...

software for distributed simulation. MAK works with customers to build and populate 3D simulated environments where modeling and simulation is needed to train, plan, analyze, experiment, prototype, and demonstrate. MAK uses

open standards An open standard is a standard that is openly accessible and usable by anyone. It is also a common prerequisite that open standards use an open license that provides for extensibility. Typically, anybody can participate in their development due to ...

as a base for its product line, which is natively compliant with both High Level Architecture (HLA) and

Distributed Interactive Simulation Distributed Interactive Simulation (DIS) is an IEEE standard for conducting real-time platform-level wargaming across multiple host computers and is used worldwide, especially by military organizations but also by other agencies such as those inv ...

(DIS) IEEE standards. The company has also drafted and submitted the WebLVC protocol for review to the

Simulation Interoperability Standards Organization The Simulation Interoperability Standards Organization (SISO) is an organization dedicated to the promotion of modeling and simulation interoperability and reuse for the benefit of diverse modeling and simulation communities, including developers, ...

(SISO), in an effort to bring live, virtual, and constructive simulation to

web browsers A web browser, often shortened to browser, is an application for accessing websites. When a user requests a web page from a particular website, the browser retrieves its files from a web server and then displays the page on the user's scree ...

. MAK Technologies holds several United States

software patents A software patent is a patent on a piece of software, such as a computer program, library, user interface, or algorithm. The validity of these patents can be difficult to evaluate, as software is often at once a product of engineering, something ...

including: A computer-implemented method for use in a distributed interactive simulation (DIS) type network protocol for simulating sustained contact of first and second computer-implemented objects on each other in a virtual environment, as well as two patents for high speed eye tracking device and method.

Customers

MAK Technologies’s software is used by governments, system integrators, and research institutions such as

Boeing The Boeing Company, or simply Boeing (), is an American multinational corporation that designs, manufactures, and sells airplanes, rotorcraft, rockets, satellites, and missiles worldwide. The company also provides leasing and product support s ...

Raytheon Raytheon is a business unit of RTX Corporation and is a major U.S. defense contractor and industrial corporation with manufacturing concentrations in weapons and military and commercial electronics. Founded in 1922, it merged in 2020 with Unite ...

Integrated Defense Systems, General Dynamics,

Lockheed Martin The Lockheed Martin Corporation is an American Arms industry, defense and aerospace manufacturer with worldwide interests. It was formed by the merger of Lockheed Corporation with Martin Marietta on March 15, 1995. It is headquartered in North ...

Northrop Grumman Northrop Grumman Corporation is an American multinational Aerospace manufacturer, aerospace and Arms industry, defense company. With 97,000 employees and an annual revenue in excess of $40 billion, it is one of the world's largest Arms industry ...

, BAE Systems, Meggitt Training Systems, Rheinmetall Canada,

Thales Group Thales S.A., Trade name, trading as Thales Group (), is a French multinational corporation, multinational aerospace and defence industry, defence corporation specializing in electronics. It designs, develops and manufactures a wide variety of aer ...

, RUAG,

University of Iowa The University of Iowa (U of I, UIowa, or Iowa) is a public university, public research university in Iowa City, Iowa, United States. Founded in 1847, it is the oldest and largest university in the state. The University of Iowa is organized int ...

Cincinnati Children's Hospital Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center (CCHMC) is an academic pediatric acute care children's hospital located in the Avondale neighborhood of Cincinnati, Ohio. The hospital has more than 670 registered beds and is affiliated with the Un ...

, SAIC, the

United States Air Force The United States Air Force (USAF) is the Air force, air service branch of the United States Department of Defense. It is one of the six United States Armed Forces and one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. Tracing its ori ...

, the

Pakistan Air Force The Pakistan Air Force (PAF) (; ) is the aerial warfare branch of the Pakistan Armed Forces, tasked primarily with the aerial defence of Pakistan, with a secondary role of providing air support to the Pakistan Army and Pakistan Navy when re ...

, the

Naval Air Warfare Center Naval Air Warfare Center is a research organization within Naval Air Systems Command to test and evaluate air warfare for the United States Navy. The center combines the following divisions: Aircraft division The Naval Air Warfare Center Aircraft ...

, The Council for Scientific and Industrial Research in South Africa,

George Mason University George Mason University (GMU) is a Public university, public research university in Fairfax County, Virginia, United States. Located in Northern Virginia near Washington, D.C., the university is named in honor of George Mason, a Founding Father ...

NASA Langley The Langley Research Center (LaRC or NASA Langley), located in Hampton, Virginia, near the Chesapeake Bay front of Langley Air Force Base, is the oldest of NASA's field centers. LaRC has focused primarily on aeronautical research but has also t ...

, Czech Air Defense Technical Institute, the

Federal Aviation Administration The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is a Federal government of the United States, U.S. federal government agency within the United States Department of Transportation, U.S. Department of Transportation that regulates civil aviation in t ...

, DRDC Toronto,

Bell Helicopter Bell Textron Inc. is an American aerospace manufacturer headquartered in Fort Worth, Texas. A subsidiary of Textron, Bell manufactures military rotorcraft at facilities in Fort Worth, and Amarillo, Texas, United States as well as commercial heli ...

, ITT, Embraer, Selex Galileo, and EADS.

Products

MAK's product line includes interoperability tools to help link distributed simulations together; Simulation tools to model vehicles, people and interactions within virtual worlds; Visualization tools which visualize the simulations playing out in those virtual worlds. With the inclusion of DI-Guy in 2013, MAK now has a full line of Human Character Simulation tools. Product Categories * Link — Interoperability tools for interconnecting simulators and simulation components within a

(DIS) compliant with the

High-level architecture The High Level Architecture (HLA) is a standard for distributed simulation, used when building a simulation for a larger purpose by combining (federating) several simulations. The standard was developed in the 1990s under the leadership of the US ...

. * Simulate — First person virtual simulation and computer generated forces simulation. Scenario generation and simulation solution for generating and running urban, battlefield, and airspace scenarios. * Visualize — 3D immersive scenes, 2D map displays, and 3D informational displays showing the simulation activity. * Humans — AI Human characters for real-time visual simulations. Characters move realistically, respond to simple high-level commands, and travel throughout the environment as directed. * Terrain — a streaming terrain solution that supplies the physical environment to simulation and visualization tools. * Web / Mobile — WebLVC based interoperability tools that connect distributed simulation federations to web clients using

JSON JSON (JavaScript Object Notation, pronounced or ) is an open standard file format and electronic data interchange, data interchange format that uses Human-readable medium and data, human-readable text to store and transmit data objects consi ...

messages.

Standards

Simulation industry standards and formats contributed to, and used by, MAK Technologies include: * High Level Architecture (HLA) *

(DIS) * Open Source Geospatial Foundation Web Mapping Service (OSGeo) * Tile Map Service (TMS) *

(SISO)

References

{{Reflist

External links

Official Website
Simulation software Companies based in Cambridge, Massachusetts