BOHEMIA, NY – May 2020 -- North Atlantic Industries, Inc. (NAI), a leading supplier of embedded computing solutions and power supplies, announces that Bell Textron Inc., a Textron Inc. company, selected SIU36 as their new Data Concentrator Unit (DCU) for the Bell 360 Invictus as part of the U.S. Army Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft (FARA) competition. The SIU36 is a Modular Open System Approach (MOSA) based sensor interface unit, supporting DDC-I's Deos FACE™ Conformant RTOS, 3U OpenVPX T2080 QorIQ PowerPC processing, I/O, communications and power supply.

“The COTS SIU36 integrates NAI’s Configurable Open System Architecture (COSA™) that maximizes modularity, flexibility, adaptability and I/O density while minimizing SWaP-C with no NRE,” states Lino Massafra, VP of Sales and Marketing. “The SIU36 is ideally suited to meet the demanding requirements of the DCU for Bell’s 360 Invictus to bring a holistic view of the aircraft systems to collect and analyze vehicle data to optimize maintenance and servicing to reduce sustainment costs.”

The DCU supports hundreds of digital and analog I/O, including programmable Discrete, A/D, D/A, Strain Gauge, Thermocouple, RTD, Variable Reluctance/Monopole, Chip-detect and LVDT with AC Reference measurement signals along with several communications interfaces including MIL-STD-1553, RS-422, ARINC-429 and Ethernet. The DCU manages, monitors and controls signals to and from the Vehicle Management System (VMS) and Heath Usage Monitoring System (HUMS).

The Bell 360 Invictus relies on proven systems and innovative processes to mitigate technical risk and improve lethality at an affordable cost for the FARA program competition that is part of the US Army’s Future Vertical Lift (FVL) program. The Bell 360 Invictus was one of two prototypes selected by the U.S. Army to complete a detailed design, build and test for a government flight test in 2023.

About Bell
Thinking above and beyond is what we do. For more than 80 years, we’ve been reimagining the experience of flight – and where it can take us. We are pioneers. We were the first to break the sound barrier and to certify a commercial helicopter. We were a part of NASA’s first lunar mission and brought advanced tiltrotor systems to market. Today, we’re defining the future of on-demand mobility. Above all, our breakthrough innovations deliver exceptional experiences to our customers. Efficiently. Reliably. And always, with safety at the forefront.