Issue 45 | Uncrewed Systems Technology Aug/Sept 2022 Tidewie USV Tupan | Performance monitoring | Bayonet 350 | UAVs insight | Xponential 2022 | ULPower UL350i and UL350iHPS | Elroy Air Chaparral | Gimbals | Clogworks Dark Matter

106 is becoming common for new high- end gimbals to be made mostly from aluminium, with strategic placement of composites and plastics in a few places where they can be afforded. Leading manufacturers meanwhile continue to experiment with different materials such as new magnesium alloys and nylons to identify where improvements in thermal stability, weight saving and cost saving could be gained. One of the more interesting trends among newer gimbals is the use of dual arms in the tilting axis – it being the outermost axis and hence the one that directly couples the gimbal ball to its base – rather than having a single tilt arm on the side, as has been more common. That trend has been motivated in part by the growing take-up of autonomous ground and ocean vehicles. A dual-arm gimbal provides greater strength than a single-arm version, and can therefore slightly better handle being mounted head-up atop an uncrewed vessel or ground system. Also, continued strong demand for autonomous ISR capabilities from special forces users, who aim to mount gimbals on high-speed uncrewed aircraft and pull heavy g -forces and dynamic manoeuvres with them, has also led to greater use of two-arm gimbal frames, both for longer product life and more stable retraction or extension from gimbal bays inside their UAVs’ fuselages. And in their labs, gimbal makers routinely experiment with new structural techniques, such as ways of using PCBs for structural loading to reduce total part counts, or additively printing new and complex structural parts that can damp August/September 2022 | Uncrewed Systems Technology AUSTRALIA Ascent Vision Technologies +61 265 811994 www.ascentvision.com AUSTRIA Dynamic Perspective +43 1 28 100 28 www.dynamicperspective.com BELGIUM AltiGator (OnyxStar) +32 497 502 349 www.altigator.com Proaim +32 477 843 327 www.proaim.be CANADA L3 WESCAM +1 704 423 7000 www.wescam.com Proaim +1 778 554 1018 www.proaim.ca PV Labs +1 905 667 7202 www.pv-labs.com CHINA DJI +86 755 266 56677 www.dji.com ZHIYUN +86 773 356 1275 www.zhiyun-tech.com DENMARK UXV Technologies +45 29 79 49 29 www.uxvtechnologies.com ESTONIA Threod Systems +372 512 1154 www.threod.com FRANCE Merio UAV Payload Systems +33 4 28 37 00 27 www.merio.fr GERMANY Kappa Optronics +49 5508 974 0 www.kappa-optronics.com INDIA ZHIYUN +91 98101 80710 www.zhiyun-tech.com ISRAEL Capture Systems +972 3 303 8108 www.capture-sys.com Controp Precision +972 9 744 0661 www.controp.com NextVision Stabilized Systems +972 77 534 2041 www.nextvision-sys.com LATVIA UAV Factory/Octopus +371 26321533 www.octopus.uavfactory.com POLAND HD Air Studio +48 502 829 521 www.hdairstudio.com Examples of gimbal systems manufacturers and suppliers