FARV ELECTRONIC ARCHITECTURE
TRADE-OFF STUDY
Performed an electronic architecture trade off study for the Future Armored Resupply Vehicle (FARV). In support of this effort, Decilog met with the TACOM program managers, and was provided technical design information on the CATTB, AIPS and Vetronics programs.
The purpose of this study was to identify and evaluate a set of potential data bus architectures that will meet the requirements established for FARV. As part of this effort, Decilog:
- identified a set of electronic subsystems required to meet the specifications established for the FARV system.
- for the subsystems identified, defined a complete set of messages to be transmitted between these subsystems including their characteristics such as update rate and message size.
- identified current and emerging data bus technologies that may be considered as potential candidates for the purpose of evaluation.
- conducted a trade off analysis in order to select a set of candidate data buses for loading calculations and analysis.
- documented the above effort in a FARV ESI Achitecture Assessment Study Report along with conclusions and recommendations
Developed an automated docking concept which uses vehicle attitude data (azimuth, pitch, roll) available from the Inertial Navigation System (INS) on the FARV and the AFAS to aid in aligning the FARV docking arm with the AFAS docking port. Using the AFAS vehicle attitude data along with the FARV vehicle attitude data, it is possible to determine the relative offset angles between the two vehicles. Using the angular position sensors at each joint in the docking arm, the docking head can be automatically aligned parallel to the AFAS docking port and this alignment could be maintained while the docking head is laterally positioned and docked with the AFAS port.