Slip Ring Technology for Armored Unmanned Ground Vehicles

With the advancement of unmanned technology in military equipment, therewill be more and more unmanned systems combining manned and unmanned elements,as well as fully unmanned ground and air-ground integrated combat systems inthe future. The development of unmanned equipment, including the use of sliprings, has greatly benefited many downstream industries. Many unmannedvehicles, equipped with optical-electric spheres or remote-controlled weaponstations, are loaded with slip rings to provide 360-degree all-round attack andreconnaissance capabilities.

As a professional manufacturer of slip rings, JINPAT has a strong technicalstrength in the field of vehicle-mounted slip rings. Whether it is civilianspecial vehicles such as fire trucks and cranes, or various vehicle-mountedequipment, JINPAT can provide the required slip rings. Unmanned vehicles forcombat can generally be divided into two types. One type is small, disposableproducts used for one-way missions, such as suicide drones, which are generallynot equipped with slip rings to reduce product costs.

In addition to these disposable unmanned vehicles, there is another type ofunmanned vehicle that completely replaces manned combat equipment. To improvethe survivability of this type of unmanned combat vehicle, it uses a chassissimilar to that of a manned armored vehicle, with armor and reconnaissance andfirepower equipment equivalent to that of a manned vehicle. Generally, thereconnaissance equipment used on such unmanned vehicles is a small radar and anoptical-electric turret. In order to achieve all-round reconnaissancecapabilities, the radar and optical-electric turret on unmanned vehicles aremostly unrestricted, so they need to be equipped with corresponding slip rings.JINPAT has many cases of developing slip rings for small sensors on suchvehicle-mounted equipment.

The firepower system on this armored unmanned vehicle is equipped withvarious caliber machine guns or small-caliber cannons controlled by remoteweapon stations. The weapon station generally integrates optical-electricsensors to detect the surrounding situation. Due to different configurations,some remote weapon stations may have rotating limits and do not require sliprings. However, after installing slip rings, these remote weapon stations havethe ability to shoot targets in 360 degrees. The slip rings used in remoteweapon stations are relatively simple, generally integrating power loops foroptical-electric equipment, switch signals for controlling weapons, and variousoptical signal paths collected by the optical-electric equipment.

The independent optical-electric turret module equipped on reconnaissanceunmanned vehicles requires a more powerful slip ring specifically designed foroptical-electric turrets. Such products generally use 75Ωcoaxial cables to transmit integrated SDI high-definition videosignals. JINPAT has more than 100 cases of such optical-electric turret sliprings. The slip rings used in small radar systems on unmanned vehicles aredetermined based on cost and combat needs, and may include high-frequency sliprings with 1-4 channels that can transmit various RF signals, using 50Ωcoaxial cables. Currently, JINPAT slip ring technology for smallradars is very mature and has the ability for mass production and fastdelivery.