Sponsored By Oxley Developments
www.oxleygroup.com
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04 Oct 18. GE Aviation’s Accelerator in Washington, D.C. Launches to Drive Efficiencies and Digital Transformation. Today, GE Aviation’s Accelerator opened to provide a place in the D.C., Virginia and Maryland area for hands-on collaboration with federal and defense customers to achieve mission-critical outcomes. The accelerator is an innovation space focused on using data and analytics with idea generation, incubation, and development for products and services.
GE Aviation Chief Digital Officer John Mansfield officially opened the accelerator with Vice President of Software Research at GE’s Global Research Center Colin Parris and GE Aviation President of Military Systems Tony Mathis. Technology partners participating in the event included Microsoft, Teradata, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Intel, CACI, and VION.
“GE Aviation’s Accelerator in Washington, D.C. is home to software developers, architects, data scientists and domain experts with specific backgrounds in analytics, maintenance, and engines,” says John Mansfield. “Building on the strong partnership we have with our customers will allow us to continue to share both our physics and digital-based capabilities, improving their asset availability, efficiency and operations.”
Through the partnership, data scientists, domain experts, software developers, and solution architects from GE will work together with Federal and Defense customers to distill some of the 10 billion data points produced by the defense sector annually into solutions that can achieve condition-based maintenance and connect disparate data sources.
“GE Aviation’s Accelerator is where digital and physical technologies come together in powerful ways to improve industrial operations of all kinds,” said Colin Parris. “We’re combining data, AI and our deep industry domain expertise into digital twins that provide unique insights and solutions to drive better mission-based outcomes for the military and for industry.”
“Digital transformation is a strategic imperative for aviation to stay competitive in today’s ever-changing world,” said Tony Mathis. “We’re partnering with customers to bring real and tangible outcomes leading to increased readiness, affordability, mission effectiveness and operator safety.”
GE Aviation’s Accelerator is located at the Warner Building, 1299 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW, 9th floor, Washington, D.C. The collaboration space is comprised of data scientists, engineers and UI/UX designers in the DMV area.
GE Aviation’s Accelerator in Washington, D.C. is their second collaboration space in the United States, with the first one in Austin, Texas, the headquarters for their Digital Solutions business. GE has similar spaces in Dubai and Munich.
Today, more than 300 unique airlines, OEMs and business jet operators covering more than 10,000 aircraft are GE Aviation’s Digital Solutions customers for services such as flight and fuel analytics, navigation services, operations management, and planning and recovery. (Source: BUSINESS WIRE)
04 Oct 18. MS Tech – a global developer, manufacturer, and innovator of nanotechnology, IoT and big data sensors – showcases its unique nanotechnology sensors and solutions for the detection of explosives, narcotics and TICs for the HLS, military, law enforcement, customs agency and critical infrastructure sectors at AUSA 2018. These globally-deployed products, integrated with the company’s innovative sensors, enable rapid detection and identification of various threats. The EXPLOSCAN™ and DUOSCAN™ Explosives and Narcotics Detectors are easy to operate, ruggedized, and able to withstand difficult weather conditions such as extreme temperatures, winds, rain, dust, humidity, etc. Due to the use of High-Frequency Quartz Crystal Microbalance (HF-QCM) nanotechnology sensors, the detectors have no radioactive source, making them safe for the user.
These solutions provide a number of additional benefits. They include user-friendly, point-of-screening interfaces enabling real-time sample analysis, and delivering results that require minimal interpretation. They are cost-effective, due in part to patented sampling swabs that reduce the cost of consumables, automatic self-diagnostic software that decreases maintenance downtime, and the fact that they supply a single solution for both narcotics and explosives detection which lowers the level of capital investment required. In addition, the systems are easy to use, are self-calibrating, and include an automatic cleaning cycle that enables a short downtime following an alarm.
According to Mr. Doron Shalom, CEO, “We are proud of the company’s unique developments and the patented HF-QCM sensors that are embedded in our products. IoT and big data sensors are shaping the world we live in, and the embedded IoT and big data sensors in our products provide a unique edge to governments and corporations in controlling and understanding the level and the scale of the threats they face. The sensors, which are used by governments around the world, detect and identify constantly emerging threats, improvised materials, narcotics, contraband and toxic industrial chemicals, thus enabling rapid interception of terror threats, as well as preventing cross-border smuggling of illegal drugs. MS Tech continues its investments in ongoing, cutting-edge R&D programs.”
About MS Tech Ltd.
MS Tech is a global developer, manufacturer, and innovator of nanotechnology, IoT and big data sensors. The company’s technologies are based on its award-winning and patented sensors, which represent a scientific breakthrough in the detection and identification of materials in gas, vapor and liquid phases. MS Tech’s innovative sensor technologies are environmentally friendly with widespread applications in several market sectors, including food safety & product inspection, homeland security & defense, bio-medical diagnostics, fire & smoke detection, water & air monitoring, and aerospace. MS Tech develops, manufactures and supplies customized detection sensors and integrated solutions to its affiliated divisions and other industrial OEMs and resellers.
04 Oct 18. Paragraf, the graphene technology development company, has rapidly followed its seed investment of £2.9m, announced in May 2018, with the opening of a groundbreaking, new facility north of Cambridge, UK. The site represents a turning point for graphene-based technologies, enabling Paragraf to drive large-scale development of mass-market, graphene-based electronic devices. Paragraf’s proprietary production technique overcomes the quality, contamination and reproducibility barriers faced by other graphene production methods. The customised equipment at the Cambridge facility will allow Paragraf to convert its cutting edge laboratory research into novel products, including next generation sensors, solid state electronics and energy storage cells.
Paragraf’s aim is for this site to become a global centre of excellence for two-dimensional materials-based device research, development and exploitation. The location close to the University of Cambridge (from which Paragraf spun out in 2017), supports the strong links that exist between the organisations. Paragraf is also working with a new academic partner, Queen Mary University, London, to further accelerate R&D.
The company will now focus on the delivery of its first major product, an ultrasensitive graphene-based electronic device. In parallel Paragraf is progressing its first strategic partnerships, utilising collaboration to drive rapid market entry.
Prof. Sir Colin Humphreys, Chairman and Co-Founder of Paragraf, said: “The rate of progress of Paragraf in establishing its R&D facility has been remarkable. Within a few months Paragraf has installed customised large-area graphene production, processing and characterisation equipment and fabricated transfer-free graphene on silicon and sapphire wafers. I greatly look forward to the production of its first graphene electronic device later this year.”
Dr Simon Thomas, CEO and Co-Founder of Paragraf, said: “The new Paragraf facility is a significant step towards realising the potential of graphene in commercially viable, scalable electronic devices, bringing the beneficial impacts of this wonder material to the world.”
About Paragraf: Paragraf is a spin-out from the Centre for Gallium Nitride group of Professor Sir Colin Humphreys in the Department of Materials Science at the University of Cambridge. Building on significant know-how and IP, Paragraf is developing atom-layer-thick two-dimensional materials, starting with graphene. Through its growing IP portfolio, Paragraf will apply these to a range of advanced electronic, energy and medical devices to benefit society. Paragraf is funded by a group of experienced investors, led byCambridge Enterprise, the commercialisation arm of the University of Cambridge, with the participation of Amadeus Capital Partners, Parkwalk Advisors, IQ Capital Partners and angel investors.
02 Oct 18. Bell and Garmin Team on Mobility Avionics Systems. Bell Helicopter, a Textron Inc. company, announced that it signed teaming agreement with Garmin International, Inc. on the development and integration of the autonomous vehicle management computer (VMC) systems to support Bell’s vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) aircraft. At Bell, we believe a convergence of technological advancements is enabling the industry to drive solutions that will bring viable urban air transportation to our everyday lives in a way that is safe, quiet, convenient and affordable. This collaboration with Garmin brings us even closer to achieving our goal. There is still work to be done to operationalize on-demand mobility (ODM) in the vertical dimension, but we believe the future is real, possible, and very close to becoming a reality.
Garmin has decades of avionics experience and a strong history of collaboration with Bell in bringing vertical lift aircraft to market. Garmin’s innovative systems will provide enhanced safety and situational awareness in all weather conditions.
“We are honoured to team with Bell to provide the autonomous vehicle management computer for the future of urban air travel,” said Carl Wolf, vice president of aviation marketing and sales. “As a demonstrated and trusted innovator in the avionics industry, we look forward to leveraging our decades of experience, our ongoing development of simplified vehicle operations, and expansion into autonomous systems to deliver an innovative solution to this exciting, emerging market.”
In this collaboration, Bell will lead the design, development and production of VTOL systems. Garmin will lead the design, development and production of the avionics hardware and software needed for ODM vehicle management, including primary flight information, navigation/communication, flight guidance and flight management systems. As previously announced, Safran will provide the hybrid propulsion system for Bell’s VTOL aircraft. (Source: UAS VISION)
02 Oct 18. Curtiss-Wright Debuts Compact, Pre-Integrated EW RF Tuner Mission Computer Featuring Leonardo DRS SI-9172 Vesper Tuner/Exciter. New MPMC-9323 EWS-DRS mission computer speeds development/deployment of high performance EW/RF applications with COTS-based open architecture solution. Curtiss-Wright’s Defense Solutions division today announced the MPMC-9323/EWS-DRS, the latest addition to its family of open architecture COTS-based EW RF tuner mission computers. To address today’s emerging Electronic Warfare (EW) threats, system integrators seek to deploy the maximum number of RF channels, supported with supercomputing-class processing in a chassis small and light enough to minimize the platform’s SWaP burden. Designed to ease and speed the development and deployment of EW hardware solutions to the warfighter, the MPMC-9323/EWS-DRS mission computer provides system integrators with a pre-integrated, SWaP-optimized Multi-Channel Tuner System that features a Leonardo DRS SI-9172 Vesper Tuner/Exciter. This new compact design eases the deployment of EW hardware solutions to the warfighter and speeds the development for system integrators. This RF tuner-based EW System (EWS) is ideal for countering emerging battlefield threats in COMINT and ELINT applications.
The MPMC-9323/EWS-DRS mission computer features an ideal combination of solutions. It integrates the SI-9172 3U OpenVPX™ module, a Curtiss-Wright Xilinx® Kintex®-7 XF07-523 FPGA mezzanine module, and an Intel® Xeon® D-based CHAMP-XD1 DSP engine, to provide end-to-end data flow and enables the customer to focus on their application instead of the integrated hardware architecture. Even better, this EW/RF tuner mission computer is packaged in Curtiss-Wright’s 2-slot 3U OpenVPX MPMC-9323 Mission Computing System. This rugged chassis, a compelling SWaP-optimized solution – 10.5” x 5.9” x 7.7” volume and weight of 18 lb. – is designed to meet or exceed the most demanding thermal requirements.
The MPMC-9323 chassis’s PSU3-THOR power supply also provides system designers with two additional XMC sites that can be optionally configured to support Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) ports (via an XMC-651 Ethernet Switch) or up to terabytes of data storage (via an XMC-554 SSD Flash Memory card), depending on customer application requirements. To support the SI-9172 Vesper Tuner/Exciter module’s high performance RF bandwidth, this EWS mission computer supports the new VITA 67.3 subminiature blind-mate multicoaxial RF backplane connectors which deliver new levels of RF bandwidth and signal density.
“We are excited to extend our support for Leonardo DRS embedded RF Tuner technology with the introduction of our new Electronic Warfare System-DRS mission computer, which combines the recently announced SI-9172 Vesper Tuner/Exciter with our best-in-class DSP engine and FPGA processor modules in a compact rugged chassis,” said Lynn Bamford, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Defense Solutions division. “This pre-integrated COTS mission computer speeds the deployment of cost-effective, proven Electronic Warfare solutions to the warfighter,”
MPMC-9323/EWS-DRS Performance Features
- SWaP-optimized rugged signal processor
- 4 x High-performance tuner channels
o 2 MHz to 6 GHz
o 100 µsecs tuning speed
o 100 MHz IF passband
- CHAMP-XD1 DSP engine
o Intel Xeon D Octal Core DSP
- 410 GFLOPs with AVX2
- XF07-523 FPGA mezzanine module
o Xilinx Kintex-7 410T FPGA processor
- User Programmable – PCIe/GTP
- High bandwidth I/O options
o 1 and 10 Gigabit Ethernet, USB
- MIL-STD-810/MIL-STD-461
About the Leonardo DRS SI-9172 Vesper Tuner/Exciter
The Leonardo DRS SI-9172 Vesper tuner/exciter card provides four high-performance configurable tuner channels. It provides multiple receiver channels with independent or phase coherent tuning and an optional exciter channel exciter channel covering 2 MHz to 6 GHz. The RF tuner provides the bandwidth, dynamic range with low noise, processing, and configurability required for today’s EW applications.
01 Oct 18. Harnessing the power of next generation computing. The introduction of next-generation mission computers for combat vehicles will enable a host of new capabilities aimed at easing the burden on the warfighter. Disruptive technologies have long shaped the IT and commercial communications sectors, where established products and companies have frequently been displaced by the latest unforeseen innovation. In the military sphere this has been less of a factor, with burdensome procurement processes and exacting requirements serving to constrain the developers of defence technologies from taking full advantage of the continual leaps in computer processing power seen over the past few decades. And yet, this is finally about to change. The prevalent adoption of common and defence-sanctioned standards for military vehicles promises to bring a true upgrade path, allowing the most up-to-date kit to be fielded at a lower cost. As military vehicles have become more sophisticated due to emerging mission demands, requiring ever greater arrays of electronic subsystems – from C4ISR equipment and EO/IR sensors to sniper detection systems and IED countermeasures – significant power demands, additional space claims, and cooling and cabling burdens must be identified and designed for.
‘If you look at the pressures on combat or reconnaissance vehicles’ electronics and sensors today, there is a vast amount of data that ideally needs to be ingested in a centralised location for rapid analysis and exploitation,’ explains Aneesh Kothari, vice-president of marketing for Systel, Inc.
‘Today’s vehicles are incredibly sensor-driven with a net-centric philosophy, resulting in a massive amount of streaming data being transported at all times.
‘In order to provide that mission computing capability in a way that is incredibly robust, traditionally that would take place over several computers. But that brings tremendous power and cooling pressures, while each system then needs to be procured and supported separately.’
Systel’s solutions leverage recent advances in high-speed and parallel processing to develop a single, multipurpose embedded mission computer, which acts as a centralised point for all sensor ingest and data fusion in the form of a SWaP-optimised single line replaceable unit (LRU).
As Kothari explains, this approach combines the CPU and GPU, Ethernet switching and storage functionality required to carry out a range of tasks, including: real-time sensor processing; video and sensor analytics, motion target processing; battle software management; storage of all sensor and post-processing data; and network distribution.
‘Given all the demands on the warfighter today, a single embedded computing capability is required to integrate all the sensor data into a central point, while at the same time providing the ability to effectively process, exploit and disseminate the data in a timely fashion to defeat what is a constantly evolving threat,’ he says.
Army fighting vehicles like this Stryker combat vehicle must integrate
This approach also provides a ‘rich upgrade path’, allowing new subsystems to be integrated with the vehicle much more easily while also making it possible for the mission computer to be potentially upgraded several times over the lifespan of the vehicle.
As well as providing obsolescence management, this allows new technologies to be more easily accommodated. Kothari identifies the move to 4K video and the Pentagon’s work to enable deep learning and AI capabilities for autonomous operation as being next on the horizon.
‘The hardware support of deep learning and artificial intelligence, that’s the next stage for the US Army – that’s key to addressing their current capability gaps and the overall objective of staying ahead on the battlefield,’ he explains.
‘So much information is now being presented to the soldier and the tactical leader, as the amount of sensor data has increased, and they are being overloaded with information. But you can leverage what is capable on the computing side and solve these problems by allowing much of that data processing to be done autonomously.
‘We are enabling that capability and ruggedising it in the form of High-Performance Embedded Edge Computing (HPEEC) solutions to support Multi-Domain operations.’
At the AUSA 2018 exhibition in Washington DC in October, Systel will launch its latest product in this field.
Raven-Strike™ is a fully rugged, high-performance computing solution, purpose-built for combat vehicles, which is packaged in a robust enclosure for minimal SWaP and maximum CPU and GPU core density.
The advantages of a central, high-speed mission computer such as Raven-Strike include: processing of analogue-to-digital conversion; EO/IR and other sensor capture and/or encode; FMV streaming, sensor and video analytics supporting motion target identification; and mission software processing, storage and distribution over Ethernet.
Already well known for its work providing high-performance rugged servers for military and industrial applications – Systel’s rackmount systems have been used in a number of UAV ground control stations, ground vehicle, and Minotaur-based aircraft and vessel applications for more than a decade – the company uses a proprietary ruggedisation process to ensure its products can handle the most extreme operating environments.
‘We are taking data-centre computing and bringing that into the harsh environments which the military needs to operate in. This is really cutting-edge stuff, but doing it in extreme environments to withstand all those operating demands – providing that ruggedisation, meeting those cooling demands – that’s what sets us apart.’ (Source: Shephard)
02 Oct 18. SPH Engineering’s latest update of UgCS adds a comprehensive search capability for drones that will allow remote pilots to more effectively conduct search and rescue operations using the UgCS platform. The search pattern tool has been developed together with public safety and disaster response UAS experts Airborne Response®. The new UgCS enhancements will provide users with a variety of quickly customisable search patterns such as the “expanding square” and “creeping line” that can be easily deployed in emergency and non-emergency situations. Based on the flight altitude input by the operator, the UgCS software will automatically calculate key variables such as the course heading and track spacing necessary to provide the prescribed coverage area for a search target. “As first responders, we are trained to develop an emergency search plan using time-tested and proven tactics,” says Tom “Oaty” Oatmeyer, Chief Pilot, Airborne Response. “The new enhancements to the UgCS mission planning software will allow remote pilots at every skill level to quickly plan and implement a professional search mission with a UAS.”
Search Pattern – Expanding Square
Expanding square tool creates an area for search based on the search radius, selected camera’s profile and flight height (AGL). A rectangle spiral-like flight trajectory that covers the specified area around the location will be calculated, having no gaps of the camera’s footprint. Search spacing is derived from the selected camera’s horizontal FOV and the flight height.”
Search pattern – Creeping line
The search spacing of the creeping-line is calculated according to the horizontal FOV of the selected camera’s profile and set height of the flight. All transversal flight segments are parallel, all side segments are located on a convex perimeter of the area’s shape.
“The new UgCS search feature is designed to make searching for a target with a drone as simple and reliable as possible,” according to Janis Kuze, Sales Director of SPH Engineering. “We look forward to continue working with the Airborne Response team to further enhance the software capabilities and implement additional search pattern features.”
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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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