NEW TECHNOLOGIES
Web Page sponsor Oxley Developments
www.oxleygroup.com
Oxley Group Ltd
Oxley specialises in the design and manufacture of advanced electronic and electro-optic components and systems for air, land and sea applications within the military sector. Established in 1942, Oxley has manufacturing facilities in the UK and USA and enjoys representation worldwide. The company’s products include night vision and LED lighting, data capture systems and electronic components. Oxley has pioneered the development of night vision compatible lighting. It offers a total package incorporating optical filters, equipment modification, cockpit and external lighting along with fleet wide upgrade services including engineering, installation, support, maintenance and training. The company’s long experience of manufacturing night vision lighting and LED indicators, coupled with advances in LED technology, has enabled it to develop LED solutions to replace incandescent and fluorescent lighting in existing applications as well as becoming the lighting option of choice in new applications such as portable military hospitals, UAV control stations and communication shelters.
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Sep 09. AIS launched its new miniature silicon Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) known as MinIM ™ at DSEi last month. This ruggedized development IMU is less than one cubic inch in size, which is 1/4 the size and weight of the Company’s established production MEMS IMUs. MinIM uses the latest capacitive rather than traditional inductive technology, keeping production costs low and this size and cost combination is opening up a whole range of entirely new markets to the benefits of reliable, rugged navigation and guidance. Hugh Williams, Engineering Director from AIS comments: “We believe this new development from our engineering team answers some pressing needs in the defence market, and in other sectors, and will change the face of navigation and guidance systems in the coming years. As the nature of operations has changed and military requirements have evolved, there has been an increasing demand for operational accuracy and for reductions in collateral damage.
This very small, lightweight and low cost IMU will make rugged and reliable navigation and guidance possible for a huge range of potential applications – platforms that in many instances have not been able to access existing IMU technology. ” Among the range of potential applications, MinIM will meet the growing demand for navigation of ever smaller guided munitions and projectiles. It will also provide a solution to the need for effective control of smaller unmanned aircraft and air launched systems. And one innovative application being explored is the installation of MinIM inside a soldier’s boot to offer navigation and tracking for individual troops during operations. AIS is a market leader in inertial sensors and sensor systems, both traditional spinning wheel gyros and solid state MEMS sensors. Over 15,000 AIS MEMS IMU’s, including gun hard variants, are in use today on platforms
such as RAM, Seawolf, APKWS, NLAW and Excalibur; and more than 5 million
spinning wheel based products have been delivered worldwide to a huge range of customers and applications.
08 Sep 09. Frontline troops will be able to see better in the dark using revolutionary new optical technology that’s modelled on the eye of a tiny parasitic fly. Engineers at BAE Systems have developed the new ‘bug eye’ technology following several months of research examining the eye mechanisms of the Xenos peckii – a parasitic fly that lives on a wasp. The tiny bug has 50 separate lenses in each eye. Each lens produces an individual image, which are meshed together to form a single large panoramic image in its brain. Scientists have recreated this effect in the new imaging device, which includes nine lenses – each about the size of a mobile phone camer