A new era of Robotic Combat Vehicles (RCV) is about to begin. The U.S. Army is getting ready to evaluate competing candidates to meet requirements for light and medium versions of a new class of modular unmanned ground vehicle (UGV).

Industry experts say open standards are helping drive development in small-form-factor battlefield and aerospace hardware like system-on-chip and single-board computers.

The suite of open architecture industry and U.S. Army standards included in CMOSS enables the reduction of C4ISR system SWaP.

Newer on-vehicle integrated networks will be composed of heterogeneous networks in the form of software and equipment from multiple commercial vendors.

Featured products will include ultra-small form factor mission computers and network switches, rugged high capacity storage solutions - such as the Data Transport System, and size, weight, and power (SWaP)-optimized embedded avionics systems - such as the ultra-lightweight Fortress Crash Protected Recorder.

The demo features PacStar’s IQ-Core Software network management software running on Curtiss-Wright rugged mission computers.

Curtiss-Wright, in collaboration with PacStar, will present a paper on “Managing Next Generation Open Standard Vehicle Electronics Architectures”.

Ruggedized mission computer systems face unique challenges for keeping cool in extreme environments. Read more about thermal management.