As part of UK Royal Navy's Unmanned Warrior assessment of unmanned vehicles, Cambridge Pixel has supplied its radar processing and display software to ASV Global (www.asvglobal.com) for deployment on the Bladerunner high speed craft. The craft is designed to operate autonomously in an unmanned mode, sensing other vessels in the immediate vicinity and avoiding them in a safe manner. It uses a marine radar to detect targets to assist with autonomous navigation.

Cambridge Pixel has provided its SPx Server software for radar processing and target extraction on board the Bladerunner craft, with the USVx display application on the ground station to provide a display of radar and tracks. SPx Server interfaces to the Simrad 4G radar to receive video and identify targets of interest. The targets, and optionally the radar video, may then be sent across a radio link to the remote control station in the mothership. The USVx display software provides a picture of the radar video with maps and targets. The remote operator may interact with the remote radar processor if configuration changes are needed.

Read more about our work with USVs here

Cambridge Pixel has announced its new RIO range of compact radar data converters. The range integrates Cambridge Pixel's radar interface hardware and processing software into small form-factor desktop units to provide cost-effective, turn-key processors with advanced capabilities. Each RIO unit may be configured and controlled through a web interface and once configured operates autonomously. The supported models include:

RIO RadarNet - Takes in radar signals (video, trigger, azimuth) and converts to ASTERIX CAT-240. The box provides a range of radar processing functions including filtering, area masking, interference suppression, NMEA heading adjustment, radar compression and optionally recording to an external USB drive.

RIO NetRadar - Takes in ASTERIX CAT-240 network radar and converts back to radar signals. This may be desired when interfacing network radars to legacy consoles that expect analogue radar signals.

RIO TrackNet - Takes in ASTERIX CAT-48 or CAT-10 track data and creates ASTERIX CAT-240 as an output. This may be used to create synthetic network radar video from existing track reports.

RIO TrackRadar - Takes in ASTERIX CAT-48 or CAT-10 and creates radar signals as an output. This may be used to create synthetic radar video signals from existing track reports.

RIO RadarTest - Provides a simple desktop radar signal generator that output radar signals as video, trigger and azimuth, or ASTERIX CAT-240, based on a number of built-in test patterns. This provides a useful test bench to validate equipment expecting to receive radar signals.

For more information on the RIO range see here

RDR, Cambridge Pixel's radar data recording application, now supports recording of target data to an SQL database and screen capture recording.

As well as saving primary radar tracks, navigation, AIS and ADS-B data into the main recording file, this information may now also be saved into an SQLite database. The database can be queried, using standard SQL syntax, to extract information. For example, to find all targets within an area, targets travelling above a certain speed, the time at which a specific target was first tracked etc.

The new RDR can now record client screen video, including the mouse pointer. A lightweight "agent" application is run on each client machine to capture and compress the screen video and send it back to the RDR system. Capture is typically at a rate of 2 - 5 Hz, which is ample for recording the operator's interactions without overloading the network with capture data.

For more information about RDR see here

Cambridge Pixel have recently exhibited at two major defence shows: Euronaval in Paris and Indo Defence in Jakarta. The latest product developments and enhancements (including RDR's SQL and screen capture support plus SPx Server's model-based tracking extension) have been well received at both shows

Cambridge Pixel's Sales Director, Mark Saunders, met Harriett Baldwin, the UK's Under Secretary of State for Defence Procurement at the Euronaval show. Mark demonstrated the latest developments to the SPx tracking software and discussed Cambridge Pixel's continuing strong global export performance.

During his time in Indonesia Mark met with dignitaries, including: His Excellency Moazzam Malik, British Ambassador to Indonesia and Air Vice Marshal Nigel Maddox CBE, Senior Military Advisor to the UK's Defence and Security Organisation within the Department of International Trade (pictured left).