CamoScience spurs special operations apps launch

Special Operations Forces Industry Conference -- MW Research and Development founder, K. Dominic Cincotti, has announced the launch of a new company -- Special Operations Apps -- that will design and field applications specifically for warfighter mobile devices, touchscreens, laptops, and smartphones.

The company's birth coincides with final testing phases of the CamoScience iPad 2/iPhone 4 app and in conjunction with the Army's urgent call for a service-wide Camouflage Improvement Effort.

"Special Operations Apps uses common platforms, like the Apple or Android systems, to integrate different hardware and equipment and centralize them into common, familiar, smart devices that the operators already know or own," said Cincotti, who is president of the new company.

"So we lighten the operator's load and provide more real-time data, improved capabilities, and more effective targeting -- taking full advantage of cutting-edge commercial devices without the need for budgeting and developing new and expensive devices and platforms that only serve one function," he said. "We get more powerful devices at lower costs and without the need to re-invent the wheel."

Cincotti, who founded camouflage-innovator MW Research and Development, Inc., and created more than a dozen patent-pending technologies, said that the new company's mission "is to answer the expressed and unexpressed needs of special operations around the globe and to put more decision-making capabilities into the hands of operators in the field."

As president of MW R&D, Cincotti is credited with creating Photographic Camouflage, camera-derived camo design that is an orders-of-magnitude advance over paint and pattern concealment. Using site-specific, digitally enhanced GEO-Int imaging, Cincotti developed a cluster of intellectual properties, including Photo Stealth, Photo Real, T.R.I.G.G.E.R., RO.U.T.E.S., MW Gripz, Photo Veil, 3D Hot Targets, P.I.R.A.T.E., and P.I.R.A.T.E. 3D.

The launch of Special Operations Apps dovetails with the release of the CamoScience app by MW R&D. CamoScience is a photo application for the iPad 2/iPhone 4, other mobile tablets, and smartphones that turns site-specific photography into what Cincotti coined "Photographic Camouflage."

"CamoScience uses augmented reality to test and create designs in real time in the field," Cincotti said. "You do it in four steps: 1) Take photos of your environment, which 2) Produce custom camo designs automatically, 3) View and test immediately in the real environment, and 4) Send or email the design electronically anywhere. And all steps occur within the mobile device. In minutes."

To develop CamoScience, the MW R&D Apps Team paired with NASA veteran Dr. Craig Hunter. Dr. Hunter and his brother Todd founded Hunter Research & Technology, and they are renowned as the minds behind The Theodolite App for the iPhone 4, the best-selling navigation application. CamoScience is a new type of hybrid app, blending Hunter's advanced understanding of app development and the groundbreaking site-specific Photographic Camouflage created by Cincotti.

CamoScience passed beta testing earlier this year, debuted in late February, and has been in final testing phases since April.

Within days of the CamoScience announcement in February, the US Army released a solicitation for a service-wide Camouflage Improvement Effort (Solicitation Number W911QY-11-R-0008), which has as its two objectives to develop "a family of camouflage patterns that offers improved concealment and reduced detection capability over current patterns" and "to acquire the data rights for a portion or all of the best performing camouflage pattern families."

Cincotti said this was a happy synchronicity, "since we've been quietly working in this field since 2007. All of our interactions over the years with special operations forces incline us toward anticipating requirements," he said, "and while we can't know how the award process will ultimately unfold, we hope to make a contribution to this shift in the camo paradigm."

CamoScience, was developed from two of MW R&D's patent-pending technologies, Photo-Real and Photo-Stealth, new camouflage processes introduced in 2007 that utilize site-specific photography from the intended operating environment -- designed initially for the unique requirements of US Special Forces.

The solicitation response date for W911QY-11-R-0008 is June 15. The criterion for award is passing a photo-simulation test.

Source: Special Operations Apps

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