AVT Australia to Develop Micro Gimbals for Military Drones

AVT Australia was awarded a contract worth $5.2 million that involves development of Micro Gimbals measuring 102mm in height and 70mm in diameter, for military drones, at the Defence Innovation Hub Industry Conference in Canberra last week.

The contract is aimed at development of a system capable of improving the quality of images captured by drones, with AVT Australia seeking to reduce the size of the technology to enable integration of multiple sensors as well as incorporating a range of autonomous tracking algorithms, monch.com reported on Monday.

According to the company, Technology Demonstration Phase of the Micro Gimbal, which included flight and environmental test demonstrations to personnel in the Department of Defence, Defence Science & Technology Group (DST) and the Australian Army, was completed in September. AVT Australia demonstrated the EO ultra-zoom capability, LWIR custom core and a range of smart features. 

Optimised for long-range intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR), the Micro Gimbal is stabilised with two-axis rotation, and incorporates an EO ultra-zoom sensor, a custom thermal core, and advanced onboard video processing. The gimbal weighs 220g and can be integrated into sub-2kg small unmanned aerial systems (sUAS).