History: Thomson Systems was established in 1984 to meet the needs of Canadian, North American and world markets for design, development and delivery of complex defence and aerospace systems on a turnkey, fully supported basis. As one of Canada's leading defence companies, Thomson Systems specializes in systems engineering/integration. Its primary business areas are command, control, and communications (C3) and land countermine systems.

Capability: Thomson Systems has extensive capabilities in all aspects of systems engineering including project management, concept definition, systems analysis, computer engineering, software development and computer modeling and simulation. The company's specific expertise includes mission systems integration, command and control technologies, communications, countermine explosive technology ,land-mine detection and neutralization, navigation, sensors and weapons, space and robotics, and integrated logistics support (ILS).

The company is a member of the Canadian Industrial TEMPEST Program (CITP) as an Endorsed TEMPEST Support Services Program (ETSSP) company, and also complies with AQAP-1, AQAP-13 and DOD-STD-2168 quality standards, and meets Canadian and NATO document handling and information processing requirements (NATO Secret level). ISO 9001 certification is planned for 1996.

Plant Size and Equipment: Thomson Systems 24,000 sq. ft. (including 5,000 sq. ft. systems assembly and integration area) secure facility features a land-based test site (LBTS), robotics laboratory, technical library, computer-aided design area, TEMPEST room, and software design and development areas/environments (DOD-STS-2167A, Ada, C, C++) as well as IRIS and PC Workstation, SPARC Stations, MicroVAX systems and Novell 4.1 network. The LBTS features a variety of general-purpose test equipment covering LF to radar frequencies. The robotics laboratory features a PUMA 260 six degree of freedom robot manipulator with a Unimation Unimate computer/controller.

Thomson Systems' primary involvement with space projects has been in the CSA"s STEAR program: Autonomous Robotics (STEAR 3 Phases I, II and III) and Trajectory Planning and Obstacle Avoidance (STEAR 5 Phase I). Other space related activities include ground control of the Mobile Servicing System (MSS), Characterization of the SSRMS (REACH) and DND's Space Based Radar (SBR) project.

The focus of Thomson Systems' STEAR activities has been in the development of SARS (Supervised/Autonomous Robotic System), a remote control station that integrates technologies such as world modeling, path planning, object avoidance, task planning, vision processing, and graphical user interfaces into a real-time system. The purpose of SARS is to provide the operator with supervised autonomous and fully autonomous functions in order to operate remote vehicles and their manipulators. In doing this, SARS enables increased functionality to be achieved and it reduces the operator's workload. The technology can be used in space as well as for terrestrial applications.