Northrop Grumman Corporation unveiled a new generation of marine alarm, monitoring, and control solutions.
The new series of shipboard machinery automation solutions, marketed by Northrop Grumman’s Sperry Marine business unit under the VisionMaster label, is being introduced to provide cost-effective scalable solutions for small- to medium-size commercial and naval vessels. The hardware is type approved to meet the requirements of major classification societies for unmanned machinery space operation.
Offered in two basic configurations – VisionMaster Alarm Management System (AMS) and VisionMaster Machinery Control System (MCS) – the new Sperry Marine solutions use commercial-off-the-shelf industry-standard components for all key building blocks within the system. This helps to control initial capital costs and also ensures cost-effective through-life support using industry-standard parts, which are readily available through industrial suppliers worldwide.
The Northrop Grumman Sperry Marine systems are based on a dedicated redundant-switched Ethernet local area network for complete field-to-server data links. The Ethernet ring is structured around two servers to provide redundancy in hot back-up configuration for control and monitoring of all subsystems. The systems’ open architecture permits the connection of monitoring stations anywhere in the vessel. The thin-client technology provides for expansion with new fixed and mobile workstations on the network.
 
“The VisionMaster AMS and MCS solutions are designed to provide an easy ‘drop-in’ replacement for legacy machinery automation systems, as well as newbuilds, with serial interfaces to the sensors on diesel engines from most major plant manufacturers,” said J. Nolasco DaCunha, Vice President of Northrop Grumman Sperry Marine. “They can be installed as stand-alone alarm, monitoring and control solutions, or integrated with the Sperry Marine VisionMaster FT™ integrated bridge systems.”