The Spanish company Aicox Soluciones has been awarded two important contracts for the supply of satellite communications terminals and associated systems for the Ministry of Defense.

 

Specifically, these are two of the lots of the framework agreement of the General Subdirectorate of Acquisitions of Armaments and Materials (DGAM) that we analyzed at the end of last year, valued at more than 60 million euros. This three-year framework agreement is established to provide the Armed Forces with new terminals for the Satellite Communications System (SECOMSAT) for land and naval platforms.

You can read the full news here

Defense chooses Aicox Soluciones in the area of RF directed energy systems with the proposal “SATCOM Jammer, Universal Jammer Directed at Attacks on Satellites” that has been carried out by our R&D department, together with its technological partners Acord Technologies and Integrasys.

This proposal has been selected in the call for the COINCIDENTE program of the General Directorate of Armament and Material.

 

The projects selected in this year’s call for the Coincidente program appear in a resolution published this December by the Ministry of Defense in the BOE. This 2022, the DGAM has focused on three areas of interest: fuel cell for land vehicles; navigation and positioning for aerial platforms; and RF directed energy systems.

In the area of RF directed energy systems, it has selected the proposal titled Judas (Satcom Jammer, Universal Jammer Directed at Attacks on Satellites) from Aicox Soluciones, with the collaboration of Acorde Technologies and Integrasys

 

The Spanish Army has begun to receive its new 8×8 Dragon Combat Vehicle on Wheels (VCR), a platform that will be the backbone of its future Brigade 35. After years of waiting, this Tuesday the first seven units of the sapper version of the armored vehicle were delivered.

The entire program is managed by the Tess Defense company, made up of Santa Bárbara Sistemas, Indra Sistemas, Sapa Placencia and Escribano Mechanical & Engineering. SBS provides the barge (starting with the Piraña V), reinforced against mines and IEDs, and is responsible for the integration of the vehicle at the Trubia plant (Asturias), although the first units have been assembled at the Alcalá de Guadaíra factory ( Seville). Indra develops the innovative mission system; Sapa, the powertrain, which includes a new transmission; and Escribano, the Guardian 30 and Guardian 2.0 12.7mm remote weapon stations.

The program aims to achieve the objective of 70% participation of the national industry in the development and production phase of the VCR 8X8. The contract for the first phase contemplates 348 vehicles in five versions, some with different variants: VCI (Infantry Combat Vehicle) version, 219 vehicles in four variants; VEC version (Cavalry Exploration Vehicle) 58 vehicles in four variants; VCZ (Sapper Combat Vehicle) version, 49 vehicles in two variants; VC PC Bon/Gr version (Battalion/Group Command Post Combat Vehicle), 14 vehicles; and Vcoav (Forward Artillery Observer Combat Vehicle) version, eight vehicles. Deliveries are planned over the next five years, until 2027.

The 219 vehicles of the infantry combat version will carry Escribano’s Guardian 30 tower, designed and built in Spain. Its main weapon is a 30mm MK44S cannon adaptable to 40mm, and it incorporates a 7.62mm MG5A1 machine gun and two Oteos electro-optical systems, one for the shooter and one for forward vision located on top of the turret. In addition, it will integrate the Spike anti-tank missile, in service with the Spanish Armed Forces, of which Defense will buy a new batch.

For its part, the sapper and forward observer versions will carry the Guardian 2.0 with a 12.7mm machine gun and, in the case of the scout version, the decision on the weapon station has not yet been made. Both towers have a two-axis gyro-stabilized mount, laser rangefinder, visible HD and IR camera, automatic video tracker and integrated simulator for training.

Technical characteristics

The vehicle has a range of more than 500 km with a maximum authorized mass of 33 tons, a payload of 9.4 tons and a maximum speed of more than 100 km/h. It incorporates independent McPherson type suspension with height adjustment and a tire pressure adjustment system for each terrain. The dimensions are as follows: 8.3 meters long by 2.9 wide. It is designed for a crew of three: vehicle commander, driver and shooter, and will carry up to six additional fighters.

It will be able to overcome longitudinal slopes up and down (with or without stopping) maximum of 60% and lateral slopes of up to 30%. It is also designed to clear vertical obstacles of 800mm to the front and 600mm to the rear, fording waterways and sunken areas of up to 1.5 metres, as well as crossing trenches of up to 2 metres.

The powertrain will consist of the Scania DC13 six-cylinder in-line engine and the SW624 transmission from the Basque company Sapa. In addition, it has an electric power generation system on board, also from Sapa, consisting of a 75 kW electric machine, an AC/CD 72 kW inverter and a 20.4 kW DC/DC converter, a 16 kW power unit and a module export power of 69 kva. The power of the vehicle will reach 540 kW.

The brain of the Dragon will be the Indra mission system, with the BMS-VCR or battlefield management system as one of the main components. This solution will evaluate based on the position, trajectory of the vehicle and situational information in real time, which is the best option to take to guarantee the success and fulfillment of the mission. The mission system will also integrate EO/IR sensors, communications, alerts, active protection, weapons, navigation aids, and other systems such as drones or combatant equipment on foot. It will have zero data loss and zero recovery time protocols, degraded mode operation capability, open, modular and scalable network architecture and double fiber optic ring.

Tess Defence, as prime contractor and design authority, has closed several contracts to equip the 8×8 VCR with different equipment and systems. Leaving aside the tower, the most important is the radio. The vehicle will carry E-Lynx radios from the Israeli Elbit Systems, which has Telefónica and Aicox Soluciones as suppliers in Spain. Other Spanish companies are also taking part in the programme, such as Tecnobit, which supplies the screens (displays) from which the external cameras are managed to support the driving of the mission system, or GMV, responsible for the Isnav navigation system. For its part, the Israeli company Plasan will supply an armor package against RPGs, mines and IEDs.

Regarding protection, the vehicle will incorporate anti-mine flooring, Stanag Level 5/6 armor with add-on kit, selective reinforcements in different parts (sides, front, tower…), anti-fragmentation coating (spall liner) and ballistic seats. It is also planned to provide the vehicle with an active protection system, still pending contracting.

Keep reading

 

The teams will go on deployments of the Armed Forces in NATO operations on the border with Russia.

The Ministry of Defense has just closed with the companies Telefónica and Aicox the acquisition of V/UHF SDR (software-defined) radios for the units of the Armed Forces that participate in NATO missions on the allied eastern flank, in the border with Russia.

The contract, with a budget of 36 million -taxes included-, was approved by the Council of Ministers in mid-September and has been urgently processed in less than two months. The acquisition of the radios has been managed through the General Directorate of Armament and Material (DGAM). This body received two offers, the winner of the temporary company union made up of Telefónica and Aicox and others that the award announcement does not reveal.

The tender has been urgently processed, according to the award announcement, “for reasons of public interest and in order to speed up the award in order to celebrate the contract in 2022 to satisfy this urgent need.”

Portable and vehicle radios

The contract includes the acquisition of equipment in the form of portable radios and for its installation in vehicles, including its accessories and the means of installation, management and configuration applications necessary for its commissioning in areas of operations.

Although the resolution does not refer to the model chosen or the number of units, everything indicates that the ministry will continue with the purchase of software-defined radios from the E-Lynx family, a product of the Israeli firm Elbit Systems, which Telefónica and Aicox sell in Spain.

Both companies have already supplied a first batch of this combat radio, of the hand-held type, for deployments in the area of operations. The contract was also awarded by the DGAM to the joint venture formed by the two companies two years ago. This temporary union also won the radio contract for the future 8×8 Combat Vehicle on Wheels (VCR) of the Army in 2021

Keep reading

 

 

AICOX SOLUCIONES, SA, has received a grant for the execution of the Title Project “DEVELOPMENT OF A NOVEL AUDIOVISUAL CONTENT DISTRIBUTION SYSTEM USING BLOCKCHAIN BDS TECHNOLOGY” and file number 2020/0720/00099949.

 

I am aware that the action for which I have received aid is co-financed with European funds and I undertake to indicate this whenever I have to refer to it, in front of third parties or citizens themselves. Due to the importance that I consider this type of aid to have for our company, that is why I value very positively the contribution of the ERDF, the main fund of the European cohesion policy, for what it means to boost our work and consequently to the economic growth and job creation in this region and in Spain as a whole.

The main objective of this project is the distribution of audiovisual content on demand, which democratizes the ability to offer content in a secure and traceable way, to any type of platform and device, and is based on developing a content management/distribution system audiovisual, whose decentralized authentication mechanism can be considered the ideal rights management mechanism

The project is carried out in Madrid during the 2020-2021-2022 annuities, and with an execution budget of €906,276.35 and an amount of aid granted of €317,196.72.

 

The Spanish Land Army has opened a contract for the maintenance of all versions of the BMR and VEC, where Aicox will be in charge of updating the command posts on BMR.

Read full article here .

To see the video, click here .

Aicox, in conjunction with Telefonica and Elbit, will be in charge of managing the E-lynx radio systems.

To read the full article click here.

To see the video, click here .

Aicox Soluciones collaborates with the Woody Social solution in the project of contracting a service to make available a platform for the production of audiovisual content in an automated way at the RTVM facilities.

The project, which will consist of the start-up by Telefónica Servicios Audiovisuales of its Sony Hive news production system, together with a video server for the reproduction of live pieces, the corresponding user terminals and automation elements. necessary, it will allow to carry out the elaboration and emission of audiovisual content in an efficient and reliable way.

Along with this system, the Woody Social solution that Aicox Soluciones currently distributes has been incorporated.

Woody Social was designed to allow journalists and technical operators to easily and quickly find and retrieve content posted on social media and web pages, in order to use them for editing in a broadcast environment.

The growing importance of using social media content for editorial production makes it necessary to provide intuitive and simple tools to users, allowing engineers and directors to keep workflow under control.

Woody Social is the answer that Woody Technologies offers for this need, thanks to a simple interface accessible from anywhere in the newsroom or ingest department. The media processing engine built into the Woody Social server handles the downloading, transcoding and publishing of the media and metadata directly in the production environment (shared storage and media asset management).

Additionally, the web browser plugin for Woody Social allows users to trigger ingest tasks from any supported web page, in 2 clicks.

Aicox Soluciones has been chosen to carry out the automatic subtitling service for people with hearing disabilities of RTVE’s bilingual Territorial news programs together with our technological partner Etiqmedia.


After the implementation of the automatic subtitling of the Territorial Centers with speech in Spanish and continuing with what is established by law and to ensure maximum coverage and promote linguistic diversity, Aicox Soluciones has been the awarded company for the implementation of this service in the rest of the Centers where their news programs are carried out in bilingual, in a dual system with Spanish.

The objective is to be able to process bilingual content indistinctly in Spanish and Valencian, Mallorcan, Galician, Basque and Catalan, in the 5 autonomous communities, Valencia, the Balearic Islands, Galicia, the Basque Country and Catalonia.

The subtitling system provided by Aicox in collaboration with Etiqmedia will carry out the necessary processing for the generation of subtitles automatically, in real time and with recognition of the spoken language.

Early detection of fires is a fundamental need to preserve forests.

Although important advances have been made in this field, current systems have two major handicaps:

– The technology used is not the ideal one.

To date, they are based on image analysis with algorithms based on colorimetry analysis and / or on the analysis of information captured by thermal cameras.

– The systems cannot be installed anywhere in geography.

They must be installed at points where there is electricity supply, mobile or fixed data network coverage and where a foundation can be made to support a tower that supports the cameras.

Unfortunately, in our forests, both electrical and communication infrastructures are not accessible over large areas of land. Therefore, the current systems cannot be applied to these areas, since they are based on the sending of information to the control center, and they require network infrastructure and power supply.

Taking into account the above, the main objective of this project has been based on developing an early fire detection system with autonomous operation, both at the level of the electrical network and the communications network.

Our system is based on the analysis of images using Deep Learning technology in which, in addition to analyzing the colorimetry of the image, amorphous forms that can change shape are analyzed and the speed with which they change and move is analyzed, to stop This mode can detect fire and smoke and be able to differentiate smoke from clouds without false alarms.

There are systems that analyze shapes and their movement, but to our knowledge there are no systems that can analyze amorphous elements such as fire or smoke and their movement. This is a resounding success of our research work.

In addition to the new and unique image analysis method with which to achieve truly automated early detection, Aicox has developed the different subsystems to be able to install surveillance posts anywhere in the geography and give the system an autonomous character:

Thus, we have our own design of a 30 m high mast that can be installed without the need for a foundation, raising its sections of 1 m sequentially with a hydraulic lifting system.


We have photovoltaic power solutions, the sizing of which is parameterized by Aicox taking into account the irradiation in the area where the system will be installed.

 

 

 

 

 

 


Aicox has adapted image capture systems and satellite communication systems to optimize system performance and thus allow images and alarms to be sent anywhere in geography.

 

 

 

 

 

We have also designed an alarm monitoring and control system, which focuses on the management of system alarms. In it, the images of the cameras of the different local posts are collected (videowall) and their location is displayed on a map (Map). When an alarm is received, the images of the local posts that generate the alarm are displayed on a screen (video alarm) while in the Map application the alarmed posts are highlighted and the direction in which the fire has been detected is indicated .

If there are enough local poles, located correctly, the exact point of the fire could be determined (although this is not the subject of this project).


Indicate that we designed a mobile image acquisition and analysis unit to obtain training videos for our analysis system, which can also be commercialized to be used by our clients.

 

 

 

To commercially promote our solution, we have designed a datasheet ( download here ) and a commercial video that shows the installation of our system in a real scenario.

 

The project, named DEVELOPMENT OF A NEW AUTONOMOUS ANTI-FIRE SURVEILLANCE SYSTEM, N + I (No more fires) , and with file number IDI-20180924 , has been co-financed by both the CDTI (supported by the Ministry of Economy, Industry and Competitiveness), and the Smart Growth Operational Program – ERDF and has an approved budget of € 724,372.