Multi-copter UAV, courtesy Inertia Labs

Inertial Labs, a developer and supplier of orientation, inertial navigation, and optically enhanced sensor modules, has acquired MEMSENSE, a developer of inertial measurement units.

The combined company expects to introduce new technologies for autonomous vehicles, GPS-denied navigation, industrial machines, and aerospace & defense. The combination will produce the following benefits, according to the companies

• Increased production capabilities of up to 50,000 units annually in order to meet the needs of larger aerospace and defense contracts for guidance and navigation applications;
• Low-cost, consumer-grade IMUs; ruggedized industrial-grade models; affordable tactical-grade inertial measurement units (IMUs) and with near-fiber optic gyro (FOG) level of performance (0.1 deg/h bias instability);
• A larger range of devices for unmanned ground vehicles (UGV); unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV); autonomous and automated ground vehicles (AGV);
• Expanded R&D efforts to accelerate delivery of IMUs for stabilization applications like electro-optical systems, pan and tilt platforms, and remote weapon stations (RWS);
• New IMU models with improved performance will increase capabilities of the Inertial Labs GPS-aided inertial navigation systems (INS), wave sensors, motion reference units (MRU) and attitude heading reference systems (AHRS);
• To complete development of new high-performance systems including a MEMS-based gyro-compasses (3 MILS Azimuth and 1 MIL Elevation accuracy).