Benefiting from extensive investment in R&D and advanced production facilities, Thales has harnessed MEMS technology to create a new Inertial Measurement Unit for navigation, particularly amenable to mass production for defense applications and commercial aviation. The result is a more resilient navigation system which is more compact (20% smaller), lighter (10% less) and less power-consuming, thanks to the use of micro electro-mechanical accelerometers, instead of mechanical ones.
IMU’s typically combine accelerometers and gyroscopes to measure linear acceleration and angular velocity, with magnetometers adding a third dimension of magnetic field data to aid in determining the object’s orientation and heading. They are prized for their resistance to airwave jamming. In recent years, GPS jamming and spoofing operations have become increasingly common, affecting the navigation of both civilian and military platforms across air, land and sea.
Built on Thales’s established TopAxyz IMU technology, the new unit can be used in a large range of civil and military applications such as airplanes, helicopters, UAVs, land vehicles, weapons, launchers and naval. Combat proven, the new IMU maintains the same level of high performance, delivering precise localization, navigation, attitude and heading information, but also offers enhanced resilience in harsh environments such as strong acceleration, vibration, electromagnetic fields and hypervelocity.
The design is based on Thales sensors using a three-axis ring laser gyrometer and three digital MEMS accelerometers with a very small mass and form factor, in a single unit. MEMS technology facilitates serial production, allowing for a rapid increase in production rates. First deliveries of the new units are expected in the second half of 2026. It is manufactured at the company’s sites in Valence and Châtellerault in France. Capacity is being tripled at the latter site.
“With the introduction of MEMS technology, Thales opens a new chapter of its fifty-year history in advanced inertial solutions,” said Florent Chauvancy, vice president for flight avionics. “This new generation IMU integrating MEMS is a technological and industrial breakthrough towards ever more resilient and competitive navigation solutions, with optimized size, weight and power consumption and best-in-class performance.” See www.thalesgroup.com.
