2023 Finalist: AI/ML Advancement and Application, Early Adopter of Innovation, Regional Innovation Champion
Finalist: QinetiQ Target Systems (Sarunas Ilgevicius, Electronics Engineer; Kurtis Peters, UVS Systems Engineer; Derek Faichuk, Control Station Technician; Blair Gordon, Technical Illustrator)
Initiative: Unmanned Target Systems – Hammer Head Forward Facing Camera
With the threat landscape constantly evolving, QinetiQ Target Systems specializes in producing a variety of unmanned vehicle systems for training purposes. The Alberta branch, located in Medicine Hat, has a variety of aerial targets, both fixed-wing and supersonic, as well as surface targets. Their top seller is their Hammerhead Unmanned Surface Vehicle Target (USV-T). The Hammerhead USV-T was specifically Designed to simulate a Fast Inshore Attack Craft (FIAC) in a multi-vehicle swarm of up to 40 vehicles. It replicates high-speed naval tactics and a variety of operational guidance plans, including straight-on highspeed attacks, crossing patterns, Zig Zag patterns, and other evasive maneuvers.
The Hammerhead Forward Facing Camera Team set out to create a Camera payload for a customer so that they could effectively train their new operators. It can be hard to stare at a control screen and drive a boat. Now, with real visual feedback visible on the screen, this makes the operator training a lot easier to grasp. With the visual feedback, this also opens new training scenarios that in the past have not been allowed as operators couldn’t see how close they were to other vessels.
