Integrated Servo Drives
Each Integrated Servo Drive includes a 2-year standard warranty. Extended warranty periods are available dependent on application.
Select “Ask an expert” for further information.
Yes, the control commands are almost identical across all our drives. All drives support I2C control interfaces. Helios also supports CAN.
You can therefore mix and match the drives across motion axes of your application, safe in the knowledge the control software being used will work effectively on all Drives.
Motors are for hair dryers!
Generally, motors run open loop with no positional control. Drives are precision engineered solutions to meet the challenges of the very precise pointing and control of payloads.
Overview’s unique Integrated Servo Drives contain in-house designed precision BLDC (Brushless Direct Current) motors that are highly optimised for torque, pointing precision and ultrasmooth motion. An Integrated Servo Drive contains these highly specialised motors, the drive electronics to power these, a precision position encoder and a sophisticated digital servo in a single integrated package.
Overview’s unique Integrated Servo Drives have been designed from the ground up, in the UK, to meet the exacting needs of accurate and agile pointing challenges such as the pointing of sensors.
Integrated Servo Drives are direct drive. The payload is mounted directly to the drive with no intervening belts or gears resulting in true zero backlash motion and significant reliability benefits.
“Integrated” refers to the inclusion and integration within the Drive of four key elements:
- A specialised, custom designed brushless DC motor optimised for precise positioning
- High performance drive electronics for this motor
- A custom developed, high precision optical rotary encoder providing real time position feedback
- An advanced “Servotorq” digital servo
all in a small, convenient, cost effective and easy to use product.
The supply voltage needed by Overview’s Integrated Servo Drives varies from across the range of Drives offered but is between 12 and 48V DC. Specific supply voltage information for each Drive can be found at the top of each product page.
Quick Start Guides and comprehensive Technical Manuals are available for all our Drives, providing the key information needed to get our Drives moving quickly.
Yes. Overview offers a Drive Development Kit that allows a PC/laptop to connect easily to our drives which includes product specific interconnecting cables. Using the Drive Development Kit new users can be up and running in minutes. The Servotorq Accelerator software included in the Drive Development Kit provides an open SDK to allow users to set up and control the powerful features of the Drives in their own software. A full Control Manual is also available for all Servotorq enabled Drives providing a detailed breakdown of all Servotorq commands and parameters.
Details of the Drive Development Kit are available here
Enquire further
In the first instance for initial evaluation Drives we recommend approaching Digikey, Mouser, RS Components and Verical websites for price and availability, just search for “Overview”. Volume purchase and support are available direct from Overview
Select “Ask an Expert” for further support regarding obtaining Drives for evaluation
Overview’s Drives are direct-drive, so you do not need to use any sort of gearbox or belts between the Drive and the load.
Simply bolt your load to the mounting holes on the Drive, ideally so that its centre of gravity is balanced, and you are ready to go.
Yes, the control commands are almost identical across all our drives. All drives support I2C control interfaces. Helios also supports CAN.
You can therefore mix and match the drives across motion axes of your application, safe in the knowledge the control software being used will work effectively on all Drives.
All drives support I2C control interfaces. Helios also supports CAN. Using I2C, the control processor is ideally located close to the Drive as I2C has limited range. With CAN enabled Drives, the range can be up to 30m without the need for a booster.
Select “Ask an Expert” for technical support and further questions relating to control
Yes. All Overview’s Integrated Servo Drives can support a slipring. Overview can recommend and supply sliprings if required. Hybrid fibre optic / copper sliprings are available from Overview supporting the Helios drive.
A common question! The answer is not straight forward and is very application dependent with parameters such as
- Mass and inertia of your payload
- Mass distribution within the payload
- Motion dynamics needed
- Sealing requirements
- To mention but a few.
Overview is very pleased to help and advise here, our applications and development engineers have huge experience in this area and are delighted to help.
Select “Ask an Expert” for further questions relating to torque.
Yes. Overview’s Helios Integrated Servo Drive includes an IMU within the Drive which is integrated into the Servotorq digital servo.
Integration Tools
Yes, in addition to the capabilities as development and integration tools all of Overview’s integration tools can be used in both development and production test environments. In fact, we use these ourselves throughout our business to ensure all our products leave the factory in the condition you would expect!
Yes, Servotorq Accelerator is the primary controller for Lelantos PTU’s providing the user with full control of the motion platform and tuning parameters.
No, Integrated Servo Drives can be directly controlled over I2C or CAN. Overview provides a full Software Development Kit and reference circuit implementations for all our Integrated Servo Drives allowing users to develop their own custom integrations and software controllers. To accelerated development timescales a DDK may still be useful to allow both software and hardware to be developed in parallel, using the DDK as a reference implementation until full integration is possible.
Yes – Please contact OV for details of licensing options available.
Pointing Solutions
Many drive solutions are described as “zero backlash” however they rely upon belts and gears to transfer torque from the motor to the payload. While many use complex design solutions to minimise backlash, they can’t remove it. Overview’s Pointing Solutions are all driven by our unique and direct drive Integrated Servo Drives therefore removing belts and gears from the drive train and making them truly zero backlash.
Yes. All Lelantos products are capable of continuous rotation and are offered with a range of sliprings to meet your specific performance and bandwidth requirements including hybrid optical / copper sliprings
Yes. Overview is very pleased to discuss adapting Pointing Solutions to meet specific needs, please contact our highly qualified and experienced technical team to explore your challenges.
Yes. The Pointing Solutions use Overview’s Integrated Servo Drives. Artemis is used in the Lelantos1000 series and Helios in the Lelantos2000 and 3000. Flip uses Leto drives.
Our Pointing Solutions are designed with a wide range of payload mounting options to simplify integration. If your payload requires a bespoke mounting option, then the mounting brackets are easily removable and Overview can deliver a custom solution.
Lelantos
Yes. All Lelantos products are capable of continuous rotation and are offered with a range of sliprings to meet your specific performance and bandwidth requirements including hybrid optical / copper sliprings.
Standard products are available in black or white but Overview are pleased to provide any colour to meet your specific needs.
Yes. Overview is very pleased to discuss adapting Lelantos to meet specific needs, please contact our highly qualified and experienced technical team to explore your challenges.
Lelantos nominally requires 48V DC. With both pan and tilt drives stalled the maximum power draw is 96W, in normal operation power draw is typically less than 15W
Yes. The Lelantos family use Overview’s Integrated Servo Drives. Artemis is used in the 1000 series and Helios in the 2000 and 3000.
Sensor Systems
The “Advanced Intelligent Sensor Environment” was developed by Overview to support our real-time Sensor Systems and is the operating system for PodView. AdvISE provides the video pipeline and processing, low level API, and PodView’s web based user interface for local or remote management and control. In addition, AdvISE is the interface between the data ingested by PodView and the ML/AI models running onboard, providing consistent interfaces and communicating the resulting information back to the user.
AdvISE allows a PodView system to be controlled via the WebUI, AdvISE API, ONVIF™ and SAPIENT™ protocols and can also output information via Cursor-On-Target messages into the Tactical Awareness Kit (TAK) environment.
No. Many Sensor Systems include a visual sensor/camera for human confirmation however this is not always the case. Some Sensor Systems are purely electronic (for example RADAR) whilst others may also include a variety of additional sensors such as RF/Radar, Thermal, Laser Range Finders and others.
Overview’s Sensor Systems are all sensor agnostic, and whilst we provide a suggested sensor payload, these can all be modified should your application require a particular sensor or sensing modality.
Observe, Orient, Decide, Act (OODA): The OODA loop was originally conceived and developed by U.S.A.F Colonel John Boyd. Originally developed to train solders to make critical decisions quickly, where the available time to gather information was limited – particularly in air combat. Col. Boyd’s strategy was to optimise and execute the OODA loop more quickly than the opposition in order to disrupt the enemy’s decision cycle. Today in defence circles the OODA loop is often referred to as the “Kill Chain” or the “Detect, Decide, Effect” chain which combines the original Observe and Orient steps from OODA into a single Detect stage.
Data refers to the raw, unprocessed output of sensors, such as visual/thermal pictures, temperature readings or RADAR returns. Information, on the other hand, is the result of processing and analysing this data to provide meaningful insights to directly inform decision making, such as detecting objects, trends or anomalies. For example, raw visual and thermal data can be analysed to identify both that a vehicle is in the scene, and that it has been recently operated, enabling the user to make informed decisions in real-time.
The primary purpose of a Sensor System is to provide a user with data (or better, information) to close the OODA loop. In a video centric device, such as Hydra, getting the data out of the sensor quickly maximises the time for the human operator to establish situational awareness, process image content and make decisions.
Latency is even more crucial in autonomous Sensor Systems powered by edge AI/ML, such as PodView. Here latency directly impacts the system’s ability to generate real-time information. Low latency ensures that data is processed and analysed quickly, allowing the system to respond almost instantaneously to changes or anomalies, closing the OODA loop at machine speeds. This is vital for applications where real-time responses are critical, such as in Force Protection or Counter UAS.
Overview’s Sensor Systems integrate one or more COTS sensors, a video codec or data processing module and a multi-axis direct drive motion system packaged within a weather proof housing. Whilst not exclusively, most Sensor Systems will include a visual imager for human confirmation and may also include a variety of additional sensors such as RF, Radar, Thermal, Laser Range Finder and others. Sensor Systems vary in size, shape and function depending on both the sensors required and the target environment
Hydra
Hydra is currently available in white, black or grey, however we can produce Hydra to suit customer specific requirements, all we need is the relevant RAL code.
Hydra nominally requires 48V DC and can be operated from PoE. With both pan and tilt drives stalled the maximum power draw is 96W, in normal operation power draw is typically less than 20W.
Yes. Standard Hydra’s use Overview’s Atlas drives. Artemis drives can be fitted for extreme applications. Please contact Overview for further details.
Yes. Hydra5000 is form and fit interchangeable with Hydra3000
Overview’s intelligent illumination incorporates both white and IR LEDs which are grouped into three bands each with different focal lengths. By intelligently matching the bands selected to the zoom level of the camera, Hydra ensures uniform illumination of the scene and avoids halo effects.
Yes. Hydra can be used head up or head down.
PodView
A Supplemental Sensor Module is an external sensor with a proven integration to PodView and AdvISE. SSMs can be controlled by, and data ingested into, the PodView edge processing capability. SSMs can be mounted remote to, or fully integrated with, PodView. Example SSMs include radars, ESMs, magnetic, acoustic, vibration sensors and more.
The simplest way to understand how AI and ML relate to each other is: AI is the broader concept of enabling a machine or system to sense, reason, act, or adapt like a man. ML is an application of AI that allows machines to extract knowledge from data and learn from it autonomously.
Mechanical stabilisation physically counteracts camera movement to maintain stability and is best suited to mitigating large, low frequency, rotational disturbances. Overview’s Helios Integrated Servo Drives incorporate onboard IMU’s and provide mechanical stabilisation completely within the drive.
Optical stabilisation moves the optical elements within the camera to compensate for shake and is best utilised with high frequency, small disturbances.
Electronic stabilisation uses software algorithms to digitally translate and crop video frames to reduce motion blur and movement at the expense of latency.
PodView uniquely combines each available method fusing the unique benefits of each stabilisation method and selectively enabling each mode depending on the disturbance, environment and mission.
