To meet the need of a position and orientation determination system for the Howitzer, Zeus Research and Technology, Inc. proposes to develop a test asset that is capable of meeting position and orientation accuracy requirements while surviving full environmental requirements including temperature, water, dust, and gun shock survivability requirements. Real time results will be relayed to a user-friendly map based interface up to 25km away. Zeus will leverage its past experience of developing azimuth determination systems for missile launcher testing to conduct a trade study of both low-cost commercial off the shelf sensors and high-performance military grade sensors to develop effective, cost efficient test asset. A combination of GPS, inertial, and vision-based technology will be used for position/pointing determination in an autonomous sensor package that operates independent from the platform. From previous launcher testing, Zeus is familiar with proven datalink solutions that are portable, scalable, and reliable in the field. The control center/remote display software will leverage past efforts generating 2D & 3D displays using DTED data sources and SDKs such as the NASA WorldWind or the NRL SIMDIS software. The end solution will be considered modular- able to be reconfigured with different sensors to meet other test objectives outside the scope of this topic with a compressed development schedule.
