Software speeds positioning system evolution
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The Mathworks product story
Edited by the Engineeringtalk editorial team
Aug 27, 2003
Instro Precision is using Matlab, Simulink and SimMechanics to speed up the evolution and reduce the cost of its product designs.
Instro Precision, a designer and manufacturer of optical surveillance and target identification equipment for the military, is using Matlab, Simulink and SimMechanics from The MathWorks to speed up the evolution and reduce the cost of its product designs.
The company is using the software to simulate its motorised remote positioning systems, which carry electro-optical surveillance equipment, enabling it to design new products more efficiently with less associated risk.
The company took less than five days to develop its first model of the system.
Instro has over 12 years' experience of designing moving platforms to remotely position surveillance equipment.
In order to meet market demands, the company needed to integrate motion sensors, such as rate gyroscopes, into its products for surveillance on a moving point of reference, for example a ship at sea.
Previously, it had to develop new products by trial and error, a time-consuming and costly process.
However, using The MathWorks' products it has been able to reduce the time and cost taken to produce the designs that it needed to move its products forward to meet these demands.
"It would have been prohibitively expensive to design these new products in the same way as we had previously", said Geoff Potter, Principal Electronics Engineer at Instro.
"Matlab has proved to be invaluable, not just for helping us to develop our ideas risk-free, but also to produce a prototype demonstrator to prove that our platforms can be gyro-stabilised".
Instro benefited from two days training with The MathWorks' consultants on the use of Matlab, Simulink and SimMechanics.
From there, it was able to quickly produce an accurate model of its motorised system.
The company is now challenging even the most basic conceptions of the system's behaviour.
"SimMechanics in particular has forced us to delve deep into the friction, moments of inertia, centres of gravity and so on that make the technology behave the way it does", added John Shiell, Mechanical Engineer at Instro.
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