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Issue 12 Spring 2012

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Cutting EdgeResearch fromScotland

KnowledgeTransfer

Foreword

Knowledge Transferin Engineering andInformaticsThis issue of Science Scotland is dedicated tohighlighting engineering and informatics successeswhere Scotland-based research, technology or newknowledge has transferred (i.e. knowledge transferor KT) into successful innovative companies. Thiscoverage of KT continues our previous features onemerging engineering companies: RenewableDevices and PelamisWave Power in our “Energy”issue in Spring 2006; ST Imaging andMicroemissiveDisplays (which regrettably has since ceased trading)in our “Imaging” issue in Autumn 2007; Xilinx,Wireless Innovation Centre, Steepest Ascent andWolfsonMicroelectronics in the “Electronics” issuein Spring 2007; and Artemis Intelligent Power (sinceacquired byMitsubishi Heavy Industries) and Oxy-Genin our “Greener Future” issue in Spring 2010.

One of the most financially significant recentcommercial KT successes, growing out of an initial£200,000 Proof-of-Concept (SE PoC) funding providedby Scottish Enterprise, was the $275 millionacquisition in 2007 by Petroleum Geo-Services ofMTEM (Multi-Transient Electro-Magnetics), a rapidlygrowing 50-personmarine geophysical prospectinguniversity spin-out company.

Here we report on 13 companies, ranging in size fromfour to almost 80 employees, who are active in thesub-sea, space, vibration and renewable energy, aswell as marketing andmedia spheres.

The origins of the companies featured vary widely.The University of Edinburgh was one of fourrunners-up in the EPSRC 2008 Initiating KT challengecompetition, spending its prize money on establishingseveral modest initiating KT awards. The embryoniccompany D-Light (“Enlightenment for datacomms”)was started from this fund before securing moresignificant £200,000 PoC funding from SE. The othersmall, highly innovative software-based companiescovered in this issue are Pufferfish, which producesspherical displays, Xi Engineering Consultants,which develops vibration software, ScienceSoft’svisualisation software for the oil & gas industry, andCereproc's text-to-speech products. Mobile Acuity has

grown out of the SE-funded Prospekt,Informatics KT support programme. Xi Track, on theother hand, is a University-based technology licencingorganisation which has been highly successful indeploying its vibration-alleviating product into theworldwide rail industry.

NGenTec, a larger 13-person spin-out, is designingnovel direct-drive electrical motors, particularly forrenewable energy applications, and has alreadyattracted £4 million of support. It is interesting to notehere that both NGenTec and Artemis have competingapproaches to improving the operation of off-shorewind turbines. We will thus have to wait and seewhether a novel electric motor or new hydraulicgearbox design can be scaled up from the current1MW design to meet the offshore 6MW turbinerequirement and win this lucrative race.

SeeByte is a highly successful 40-person Heriot-WattUniversity spin-out which provides the world’s mostadvanced software technology for underwater robots,subsea engineering, offshore technology andremotely-operated vehicles, and is heavily supportedby governments and industry worldwide. WFSTechnologies, with 25 employees, is an excellentexample of an industrial start-up company whichhas revolutionised underwater communications bymoving from acoustic to electromagnetic propagation,enabling, for the first time, communication directlyfrom a submerged submarine to an aircraft. Otherexamples of this direct route to company formation,included here, are Nautronix, Gas Sensing Solutionsand Clyde Space.

We encourage you to read about these embryoniccompanies who are exploiting their intellectualproperty (IP) and leading the engineering andinformatics technology revolution from their bases inScotland. To ensure full coverage of Scottish KT, afuture issue of Science Scotland will focus on KTactivities in the Life Sciences sector.

Professor Peter Grant, OBE, FRSE, FREng, FIET, LFIEEE

PROFESSOR PETER GRANT

ContentsEntrepreneurialism& knowledge transfer: a personal view 4Professor David Milne – Science Scotland Editorial Board

Deep thinking (underwater) 6SeeByte

Newwavelength 8WFS Technologies

Solutions for another world 10Nautronix

Watch this space 12Clyde Space

Better vibrations 14Xi Engineering Consultants

Can Scotland lead theway in high-speed trains? 16XiTRACK

Powerful ideas 18NGenTec

It’s a family affair 20Sciencesoft

Enlightenment for datacomms 22D-Light/PureVLC

Sensible sensors 24Gas Sensing Solutions

WorldWideWebworld 26Mobile Acuity

What comes around... 28Pufferfish

Helpingmachines soundmore human 30Cereproc

Editorial Board:Chair: Professor John Coggins, OBE, FRSE, FSBEmeritus Professor of Molecular Enzymology, School of Biology,University of Glasgow

Professor Peter Grant, OBE, FRSE, FIET, FIEE, FREngEmeritus Regius Professor of Engineering, School of Engineering, University of Edinburgh

Professor Angus Lamond, FRS, FRSEDirector of the Wellcome Trust Centre for Gene Regulation & ExpressionCollege of Life Sciences, University of Dundee

Professor DavidMilne, OBE, FRSE, FIET, SMIEEE, FREngNon-Executive Director, Wolfson Microelectronics plc

Editorial Team:Writer: Peter BarrDesigner: Emma QuinnProduction Editor: Jenny Liddell, The Royal Society of EdinburghPrinter:Mackay & Inglis Ltd

www.royalsoced.org.ukwww.sciencescotland.org

ISSN 1743 – 6222 (Science Scotland Print)ISSN 1743 – 6230 (online)

If you would like more information, please contact: [email protected]

The Royal Society of Edinburgh, 22–26 George Street, Edinburgh EH2 2PQ

ANY VIEWS EXPRESSED IN THIS PUBLICATION DO NOT NECESSARILY REPRESENT THOSEOF THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF EDINBURGH, NOR ALL OF ITS FELLOWS.

The Royal Society of Edinburgh, Scotland's National Academy, is Scottish Charity No SC000470

sciencescotland ISSUE 12 SPRING 2012 page 3

Entrepreneurialismandknowledgetransfer: a personal view

page 4 sciencescotland ISSUE 12 SPRING 2012

Commercialisation is essential to our economicfuture, but DavidMilne argues that Scotland-basedentrepreneurs and investors should be raising their game– deciding at the start-up stagewhether theywant todevelop exciting new technology or build successfulcompanies able to compete in the global arena andcontribute to society at large...

New ideas in science and technology will always bewelcome, but governments and funding bodies todayincreasingly focus on commercialisation – and the need foreconomic benefit. That is why research grant applicationsdemand routes to market and researchers are encouragedto exploit their results commercially through licensing ordirect company formation.

This transfer of knowledge to themarket place andconsequently to the public at large is inherently good andshould be encouraged. Not all research, of course, isor should be nearmarket, and it is ameasure of thesophistication of a society howmuch of the economic cakeis spent on ‘blue sky’ research. When it was first invented,the laser was a good example of a solution looking for aproblem, but society nowwould bemuch the poorer withoutthemany applications that have subsequently followed.

We are, however, at a different time in our understanding ofthe physical world and the balance between pure researchand applied research should be tilted well towards theapplied end of the spectrum. As can be seen from the small

sample of activities described in the remainder of thispublication, there is a healthy level of commercialisationof scientific ideas in Scotland, but it does not yet make asignificant contribution to the country's GDP.

One of the issues concerning the Scottish economy is thedramatic decline over many decades of the manufacturingsector. After heavy industry moved overseas, mainly tothe Asia Pacific, employment was supported by theintroduction of electronics manufacturing in the secondhalf of the 20th Century. This certainly helped withemployment, but the reality was that the companies ingeneral were simply building products to specificationsprovided by the creative centres in the USA, Japan andelsewhere. There was no product ownership locally(with the notable exception of Hewlett Packard) and sowhen lower-cost countries developed the necessarymanufacturing infrastructure, the factories departed again.

It had been hoped that the introduction of these electronicscompanies would have produced spin-offs and generateda healthy indigenous high-technology environment.However, the companies were never able to do thisbecause they were focused onmanufacturing, not oninnovation. Management’s task was to turn out theproducts as cheaply as possible, not to generate newproducts. What wemanufactured here was based oncodified knowledge from elsewhere, which did not lenditself to entrepreneurial activity or innovation.

Viewpoint DavidMilne

PROFESSOR DAVID MILNE OBE FRENG FRSEIS THE FOUNDER AND FORMER CEO OFWOLFSON MICROELECTRONICS PLC

Weneedmore leadership companiesin Scotlandwith the capability andambition to compete internationally.


Althoughmuch of the investment in high-tech Scotland hasbeen inmultinational manufacturers, there has been anawareness in the universities and among a small numberof entrepreneurs of the opportunities for developinghigh-tech companies based on indigenous research andtechnology. As expected, Heriot-Watt and StrathclydeUniversities, with their engineering backgrounds, hadstrong technology transfer offices, Edinburgh Universitydeveloped close links with the semiconductor industry,while Glasgow University, with a focus on optics, andDundee University in pharmaceuticals, were active in tryingto commercialise their research. Most of this activity tookplace through centralised Technology Transfer officeswhich had successes licensing tomajor corporations butwere often criticised for their bureaucratisation of theprocess when it came to start-ups and interaction withsmaller companies. Interminable IPR and investment valuenegotiations often killed the entrepreneurial spirit and withit the success of many potentially successful ventures.Protecting intellectual property is important, but it has littlevalue until it gets to themarket – and this usually takes farmore investment than wasmade in the original research.

In spite of the difficulties, successful high-tech companieshave been created. As a result, there is now amuch betterunderstanding of the dynamics of the process andmoreappreciation of the importance of this activity to theeconomy. Universities in Scotland have embraced thechallenge, embedding commercialisation activities inappropriate departments such as Infomatics, Engineeringand Biotechnology. This has led to a blossoming ofcompany start-ups on a par with or even ahead of themost active places anywhere in the world.

True success, however, is not measured by the number ofcompanies created but by the growth and impact of thesecompanies in the widest economic context: revenues, profit,employment, international presence, societal contribution,etc. It is regrettable that to date only a handful of companies,among whichWolfson Microelectronics plc is perhaps themost notable, have achieved this. The company spun out ofthe University of Edinburgh in 1985 and honed its technologythrough design contracts before transitioning into asemiconductor product company with a global presencethat now employs over 400 people. It went for its InitialPublic Offering (IPO) in 2003 on themain London Exchangeand reached amarket capitalisation in excess of $1 billionin 2006. Its “passion for great audio” has generated a brandthat is appreciated worldwide and its products provide theaudio in most of the leading consumer electronics products.

As the desire to createmore indigenous companies ofscale in Scotland has grown, efforts have been directed atproviding a supportive ecosystem to nurture start-ups. Atthe earliest stages, students and researchers are sensitised

to the possibility of company formation and the dynamics ofcommercialisation. The Business Schools are increasinglyspreading their expertise across the universities, aiming tohelp budding entrepreneurs grasp the basics of business.And in amore formal programme, the EntrepreneurialFellowship scheme funds researchers to commit a year toexplore commercialising their research in a new companyand get training in business skills. Specific organisations,such as Infomatics Ventures in Edinburgh, are alsoproviding support to software and electronic companystart-ups, with a host of events, advice and incubator spacenext door to the research activities of the university. Thisclose association of academic and commercial activityprovides, in my view, the best environment for the initialstages of company formation.

The big issue, however, is the development of companiesof scale from the initial stages with one or two peopleto an organisation focused on expanding their service ordeveloping their product towards commercial reality.This usually needs some outsidemoney, although I wouldalways encourage entrepreneurs initially to bootstrap theiractivities from friends and family. Outsidemoney inScotland usually means ‘Angel’ investment, which isexceptionally vibrant here. There aremany syndicates withwell developed channels and significant experience. Theyare, in fact, collections of high-net-worth individuals whooften have personal business experience and can helpcompanies inmore ways than simply providing finance.While Angel finance provides the basis for the developmentof the technology, deeper pockets are often required for thereal growth of a company with its own products, sales andmarketing activities on a global scale. This will usuallyinvolve the Venture Capital community and there is plentyof scope for conflict of interests with the Angels.Entrepreneurs need to be clear whether they aredeveloping technology and hoping to sell out to anothercompany – which is the realm of the Angels – or reallyinterested in developing a profitable and sustainablecompany. If it is the latter, the challenge is formidable, butthe journey is more exciting and eventually more rewarding.

The thrill of the IPO and recognition of the company by thepublic at large is, in my view, an experience worth strivingfor and I would thoroughly recommend it. The choice for theentrepreneur will be influenced bymany things and it is notsimply one of logic – it is visceral. The ambitions of thefounder and themanagement are what should drive thedecision, treating the finance as themeans to an end andnot, as is often the case, the driving force. We needmoreleadership companies in Scotland with the capability andambition to compete internationally and I am encouragedby the level of activity highlighted in this and other editionsof Science Scotland.

Deep thinking(underwater)


Core business: Autonomy solutions for remoteand unmanned systems

Location: EdinburghInternationalOffices: Seattle, SanDiegoFounded: 2001Employees: 40Clients: BP, Chevron, BAESystems,

Subsea 7, SMD, theUSNavyand 13 otherNaviesworldwide

The original business approachwas deceptively simplebut it worked extremely well, establishing SeeByte as aleading solutions provider to some of theworld’smostpowerful navies and oil & gas corporations. “The key tothe company’s early success,” says founder David Lane,“was listening to customers and focusing on theirrequirements.”

The company develops intelligent software for unmannedsystems so they can operate autonomously, scanning theenvironment and processing the vast amount of data thiscan generate, to make decisions, interface with othersystems and display information in a meaningful format.And rather than developing bespoke solutions all the time,SeeByte’s foundation model was to re-use the buildingblocks developed for particular systems so it did not needto re-invent the wheel for every project. Once a specificsolution was built, it could then be replicated and licensedor sold, thus reducing the company’s costs and helpingmargins in the critical early years.

SeeByte was founded in 2001 to bring to market newtechnologies designed at the Ocean Systems Laboratory ofHeriot-Watt University. Lane and several colleagues haddeveloped software for a number of underwater projectsand thought it was time to break into the business worldwhile still maintaining close links with their academicpartners. “Is there more value in this?” was the questionthat first inspired Lane. “Can we do something better?After 15 years of basic and applied research, how could weput something back andmake an impact on commerce?”

The big idea was “to improve underwater operationsby combining streams of sensor-derived data fromremotely-operated vehicles to create a single integratedpicture that would deliver greater information andawareness of an inaccessible underwater situation/location.”

Today, SeeByte’s software is used in locations all overthe world to search, classify and map the underwaterenvironment, to automatically identify objects and toinspect ship hulls and oilfield infrastructure, enhancingthe capabilities of various kinds of remote platforms.

In the early days, Lane and his team thought they would bea company who built underwater vehicles, but then theyrealised they would be better off developing softwaresolutions for the vehicle makers and their customers.“This approach also better reflected our technicalcompetencies,” Lane explains.

In Lane's opinion, it was also essential to break free fromthe academic environment while still maintaining closelinks with Heriot-Watt. “The interface between theuniversities and industry does not always work,” says Lane.“Industry wants something that solves a problem.Academics do research.” However, there was a lot to gainfrommaintaining a partnership with Heriot-Watt if thecompany was to prosper – for example, access to researchand intellectual property – but it was also important tooperate as a business rather than just a research lab.“There were tangible and intangible benefits,” Lanesays.“SeeByte was able to recruit key technical staff thatcreated the research, while Heriot-Watt is not only ashareholder but also gained commercial exposure for itsstudents through industrially-relevant project work, andsupport for further research. “Heriot-Watt doesn't do lotsof spin-outs,” says Lane, “but it has a good track recordwith the spin-outs it’s currently involved with.”

Profile SeeByte

UNMANNED UNDERWATER VEHICLES PROCESS VAST AMOUNTS OF DATA

The best decision so farwas to start up in thefirst place.

> The SeeBytesoftware suitecombines datastreams frommultiple sensors toautomate activity andto give operators acomplete picture oflocation andsurroundings.

> SeeTrack CoPilothelps remotely-operated vehicle(ROV) pilots improvetheir ability to focuson complex tasks.

> SeeTrackAutoTrackerkeeps unmannedunderwater vehiclesprecisely locatedrelative to seabedpipelines, foraccurate inspectionand surveying.

Initially, the team at SeeByte explored the possibility of working with Yorkshire-basedSlingsby Engineering to develop a solution for its ROVs (remotely-operated vehicles),but then it started looking much further afield.

The company's first customer was the US Navy, attracted through Heriot-Watt’sresearch links with Florida Atlantic University. This taught everyone important businesslessons from the start, and a ‘can do’ culture with the courage not to be afraid to failand to have a go. The US Navy also sent SeeByte a cheque before its bank account hadeven been opened – a nice kind of problem to have.

In the early days, the company learnedmuch about the importance of requirements asit worked within the spiral development approach of the US Navy “acquisition pipeline,”developing early capabilities in autonomous systems for detecting underwater mines.The UK's Ministry of Defence funded some of the early-stage research, while ScottishEnterprise also supported ongoing staff training into commercial and managerial roles.

The rigour of understanding requirements also helped the company gain access to theoffshore oil and gasmarket. Through a series of Joint Industry Programmes (JIPs)supported bymajor oilfield operators and contractors such as BP, Conoco Phillips,Chevron and Subsea7, SeeByte “de-risked game-changing solutions” using autonomousvehicles to inspect pipelines and other subsea infrastructure. These systems are nowstarting to be used commercially by customers, and have a bright future for expansionthrough trust generated in the technology and the team, and the commercial opportunitiesthat have emerged. “However, it's taken almost ten years and several JIPs to get to thestage where commercial capabilities are ready and can be accepted,” says Lane.

Lane stepped down as Chief Executive last year and now spendsmore time developingnew research initiatives, encouraging students and supporting knowledge transferactivities. But he continues to take a close interest in SeeByte and is confident thecompany has a big future as it continues to expand in its chosenmarkets and developits IP pipeline.

One of the key strengths of SeeByte technology is systems which canmake their owndecisions, but probably the best decision so far was to start up in the first place – andfocus on being a solutions provider in one of the world’s most competitive and profitableindustries.


PROFESSOR DAVID LANE FRSE

Newwavelength


Core business: Underwater radioLocation: LivingstonFounded: 2003Teammembers: 25Turnover: £2million

“We stumbled into underwater radio,” says BrendanHyland, founder and chairman ofWFS Technologies.“Therewere no text books and nobody thought itwould work, but we struck it lucky. Business is whatyou do about that opportunity.”

As well as doing something technologicallycontroversial, WFS today is very different from thecompany originally envisaged. The company wasfounded in 2003, to work in the “interface betweenwireless and optical” technologies and “the link fromthe kerb to the home,” but after it won amajor contractfrom BAE Systems to develop a customised datacommssolution for aircraft, the company took a completechange of direction. The BAE project was bothsuccessful and profitable, but WFS did not own theIntellectual Property (IP). Hyland and his partnersstarted to look in other directions – and that waswhen they “stumbled” into underwater radioand the development of data and video links forunderwater signalling.

The technology may have been new, but the idea wasmore than 150 years old. In 1842, Samuel Morsediscovered underwater radio “by accident” when atelegraph cable broke during a transmission across theHudson River and the message still managed to “jump”across the break in the cable. Later on, many other

inventors, including Nikola Tesla, tried to come up withsolutions and, during the Cold War, the US and theSoviet Union spent “hundreds of millions of dollars”on research, and built low-frequency radio systems forsubmarines. At that time, there were no commercialapplications for underwater radio: control systems werenot installed underwater and commercial applicationswere hard to imagine. But the emergence oftechnologies such as broadband, Wi-Fi and Bluetoothled to widespread use of wireless systems. In the subseaworld, the increased deployment of tethered remotely-operated vehicles (ROVs) and untethered autonomousunderwater vehicles (AUVs) in the petrochemical anddefence industries soon changed the rules of the game...

ProfileWFSTechnologies

SEATOOTH+POWER BRINGSTOGETHER SUBSEADATA AND POWER FORAPPLICATIONS SUCH ASWIRELESS BACK UP OF BOPS(BLOW OUT PREVENTERS)

AUVs are like dolphins, whooperate using acoustics (ears),and electromagnetics (eyes).WFS provides the ‘eyes’.

AboutBrendanHylandBrendan Hyland, founderand chairman of WFSTechnologies, studiedelectrical engineering atQueen’s University, Belfast,and worked in telecoms,industrial instrumentationand the chemical industrybefore he did his MBA andfounded optoelectronicscompany Kymata in 1998.Hyland stood down as CEOin 2001 and Kymata wassubsequently bought byAlcatel. In recent years,he’s focused on “businessmodelling and businessstrategy,” especially themeeting point between“emerging technologiesandmarket needs.”

The breakthroughAccording to Hyland, in 2004, whenWFSfirst considered underwater radiocommunications, what made the criticaldifference was his “bloody-minded”refusal to accept the received wisdom thatradio does not propagate underwater,and soon after, the research team atWFS developed a low-frequency (20kHz)signalling systemwhich seemed topenetrate sea water.

WFS revisited an old technology,recognising the potential of shorter-range communications over distancesof less than ten metres. Ironically, thecompany started its research unawareof earlier efforts – simply becausethere was so little documentation.

“We had to find what was possible – thenfind commercial applications that fittedwithin this envelope,” says Hyland, andin 2006, WFS unveiled the world’s firstcommercially available underwaterradio modem.

Today, the company describes itself as“the world’s leading supplier of through-water and through-ground wirelesstechnology for communication, navigationand power transfer.” It also boasts of30 granted patents and 200 patentapplications, and supplies its radio,acoustic transmitting and inductive powertransfer technologies to the subsea oil andgas, environmental and homeland securityand defence industries. WFS now hasthree product platforms for the energy,environmental, consumer and defenceindustries, while another major market iswireless back-up solutions for cables incase theymalfunction. The key advantagesof WFS technology are that it will operatein adverse conditions and is unaffected byacoustic noise ormultipath problems.

“Our goal is to support the developmentof this newmarket,” says Hyland, whoidentifies twomajor reasons for thecompany's continuing success:

1 Continuous investment in R&D tomaintain technology and productleadership

2 An innovative approach to identifyingthose applications where thecompany's products canmake adifference

Rather than being a spin-out from auniversity, the intellectual traffic is goingin the opposite direction. WFS providesits knowledge and equipment toresearchers at universities includingMIT, Georgia Tech, Oxford, Edinburgh,Strathclyde and Newcastle. The companyhas used academic consultants forseveral small projects, but still doesits own R&D.

“When we began, universities werenot interested in doing research inunderwater radio,” says Hyland (who alsobelieves universities should not hold on toIP but hand it over to people who start upnew businesses). “This is changing as thescale of the opportunity has becomeapparent. We havemanaged to keep ourIP untainted,” he continues. “This helpswhen doing commercial deals. And ouraim is to grow shareholder value bydeveloping IP, licensing technology andselling products and services.”

Working in such a newmarket alsomeansWFS has to be very creative:“We have to create competition,” saysHyland. “We have been instrumental insetting up the SubseaWireless Group(SWIG), a not-for-profit organisationtasked with defining open industrystandards. This group, with a key themeof interoperability, will ensure all subseawireless systems can communicate witheach other regardless of manufacturer”.Othermembers of the SubseaWirelessGroup include BP, Teledyne Benthos,Chevron, Emerson, HIMA Americas,Technip, Yokogawa, Nautronix, MCSKenny and Saab.

“As well as setting industry standards, wewant to exposemajor players to what thistechnology can offer,” says Hyland.“A hundred per cent of nothing is not asmuch as a small share of amulti-billiondollar market.”

Hyland says that luck as much as hardwork put WFS on the road to success,but the company is already thinking onestep ahead, designing solutions forvery small, hovering AUVs that dockunderwater, harvesting data anddumping it, and wirelessly rechargingequipment as well as themselves.“It will be a global market,” says Hyland,“and transform the economics of theunderwater vehicle industry.”


WFS PROVIDES WIRELESSCOMMUNICATION CAPABILITY TO AWATCHKEEPER™ BUOY FROM AXYSTECHNOLOGIES INC. (AXYS) FORREAL-TIME DATA FROM SUBSEA SENSORS

Solutions foranotherworld


Core business: Underwaterwireless acousticsystems, specialising in through-water communication and positioningtechnologies for the offshore industry.

Location: Aberdeen (plus offices in HoustonandRio de Janeiro)

Founded: 1977Employees: 77Customers: Oil & gas industry, defenceTurnover: £13million

Even thoughNautronix is headquartered in Aberdeen andmost of its customers operate in theNorth Sea,most of itsproducts are being used thousands ofmiles away – andthousands ofmetres under the sea. In fact, according to ChiefTechnologist Nigel Orr, some underwater environments areso remote and so extreme, theymay aswell be on a differentplanet. Thismay seema fanciful comparison, but diversreturning fromdeep-water dives can take up to twoweeks toreturn to the surface, while astronauts take only a couple ofdays to fly back from themoon.

Remote and difficult environments are also whereNautronix technology has beenmost successful, providingcommunications and positioning solutions for the oil andgas industry, operating in deep-water locations all aroundthe world, at depths up to 3,000–5,000 metres.

The company can trace its roots back to 1977, when itdeveloped its first tracking pipeline pigs – devices whichtravel through pipelines for inspection andmaintenance work.

It was a pioneer in electromagnetic andmagnetic detectors,and themore sophisticated tracking pigs developed sincethen have now become off-the-shelf products which stillwin ‘bread-and-butter’ sales for Nautronix.

In 1996, Nautronix established itself as a leader inDSP-based (DSP = digital signal processing) heliumspeech unscramblers – devices that enable operators tocommunicate with saturation divers by compensating forthe high-pitched voice effect caused by breathing helium.The human voice is formed by a combination of resonancesin the larynx and the mouth cavity, and the sounds from themouth cavity are affected by helium. The resulting ‘MickeyMouse’ sound effect may be amusing at first, but makescommunication very difficult with divers undertakingdifficult and dangerous work under water.

The unscramblers perform a complex task, reducing thefrequency of some tones (i.e. lowering the pitch) whileleaving other tones the same, so speech sounds normal.The resulting product has consistently scored 98%intelligibility on tough industry standard testing, (i.e.98 words out of every 100 are clearly understood).

The company was also an early developer of commercialspread-spectrum communication and positioning systems.In the shallow waters of the North Sea, communication andpositioning systems are relatively simple, in depths of lessthan 100metres, but as soon as you begin to operate atgreater depths, new problems emerge (depths of 3,000mare common inmodern oil production operations acrossthe world).

ProfileNautronix

The ability to overcomecommunication difficulties inhostile environments is ourbiggest strength.

KnowledgeTransferNautronix recently set up a newtechnology department tomanage knowledge transferbetween engineering, academiaand customers, and help to planfuture product developments.According to Chief TechnologistNigel Orr, there is huge potentialfor cooperation with Scottishuniversities, where there issignificant expertise in areassuch as communications andsignal processing. Over thelast five years, Nautronix hasincreased the headcount in itsengineering department from12 to 26 people, to rise to thechallenge.

According to Orr, the offshoreindustry is generally conservativewhen it comes to introducing newtechnology, but when there isan opportunity to save time andmoney, and improve productivity,customers do start to listen.In the past, Nautronix tended tobemore “reactive” when it cameto the development of any newproducts, with incrementalchangesmainly led by customerrequests, rather than offeringthe potential of totally newapplications.

The new approach complementsthat responsiveness by beingmore proactive and forward-looking, says Orr, finding outearly if customers are interestedin new possibilities that theymight not expect Nautronix canoffer– for example, how aboutcontrolling 150 valves with asingle device, instead of onlysixteen valves, as at present?Would that be useful? What aboutsending data subsea overmuchlarger distances?

Recent product developmentsinclude the extension of theNASeBOP product range toenhance the capability of thecompany’s blowout preventercontrols, which was recentlyawarded the Subsea 2012Innovation and TechnologyAward. Also in developmentare upgrades of the existingproduct range to benefitfrom developments in signalprocessing and communicationsto improve lifetime andcapabilities, and the NASMUXproduct range to provideprimary acoustic controlof subsea equipment.

Whatmakes Nautronix technology stand out,says Orr, is its track record in signalprocessing systems, including subsea digitalacoustic communications – for example,where customers need to replace expensive,heavy and damage-prone subsea cables witha reliable wireless communication channel, oraccurately track the position of large, movingobjects being installed in deep water.

In the last ten years, the product range hasextended to include blowout preventercontrols – remote communications deviceswhich are used as back-up to shut downsubsea valves (and prevent leaks) when theprimary control system fails in an emergency.In this situation, hundreds of lives and anenvironmental catastrophe can be at stake,and the industry trust in the NASeBOPproduct range is testament to the highreliability that it provides.

“The ability to overcome communicationdifficulties in hostile environments is ourbiggest strength,” says Orr. The problemsfaced include limited bandwidth, long pathdelays and extreme Doppler shift, high noiselevels in-band from vessels and engineeringoperations, and full ocean-depth operations.“We are also a small company compared toourmajor competitors, and this means wecan bemore flexible in responding toindustry needs,” says Orr.

When the position of ROVs and subseaequipment needs to be accurately tracked, theNASNet® system creates a grid of positionreference beacons. These are dropped to theseabed from a boat, which then circles thearea to establish their position, typically to aprecision of a few tens of centimetres. TheNASNet® GPS-like positioning technologydeveloped by Nautronix alsomakes it possibleto space out the beacons at a distance ofseveral kilometres, while alternative systemshave to be positioned a few hundredmetresapart, and this means significant savings andspeeds up deployment.

The solutions which Nautronix has developedinclude true independent multi-usercommunications using spread spectrum.This means they avoid the need to have asynchronised network to decide who cancommunicate and when. As a result, whenmultiple vessels need to work in an area(e.g. in the Gulf of Mexico after the DeepwaterHorizon incident), they can freely share theNASNet® system through the area withoutinterference, to improve redundancy forsurface vessels and as a sole referencefor ROVs and other equipment subsea.

The high reliability and potential for covertoperation underlying the communication andpositioning systems was originally developedby Nautronix for military applications, where itenabled submarine communications to beundetectable above background noise levels.While today’s work focuses on the industrialand commercial market, the same productshave been used successfully to providetracking and communications in submarineranges during trials.

Accuracy and availability are critical factorsfor positioning systems. Surface vesselsneeding an accurate fixed position have tosupplement their differential GPS (DGPS)system (which can be affected byphenomena such as scintillation – spikesin solar activity which cause interference)with additional independent sources.Nautronix builds high levels of redundancyinto its NASNet®DPR systems, and providestypical positioning accuracy of onemetre.“Unplanned downtime is unacceptable,” saysOrr. “With offshore vessels costing up to $1million a day, the pressure to fix any problemsincreases rapidly”

“We provide high-quality solutions for difficultenvironments,” says Orr. “And themoredifficult the problem is, themore it requiresNautronix.” Orr believes that engineers inScotland are undertaking “ground-breakingresearch” in subsea technologies, and withdeep-water exploration and extractionbecomingmore common as the oil and gascompanies widen their search for new fields,Nautronix and its academic partners are wellplaced to take full advantage – whether theyare based in Aberdeen, Houston or Rio deJaneiro.


NIGEL ORR

Watchthis space


Core business: Small andmicrosatellite systems

Location: Glasgow

Founded: 2005

Employees: 24

Major customers: European SpaceAgency,NASA, USAir Force

The satellitemay only be a few centimetres across, but itcould be the next big thing in Scotland's fast-expanding spacetechnology industry. This year, Clyde Space plans to put thefirstmade-in-Scotland satellite up into orbit, as part of anationwide project called UKube-1, which also bringstogether the Advanced Space Concepts Laboratory at theUniversity of Strathclyde aswell as Glasgow-based SteepestAscent andMESLMicrowave of Edinburgh, plus severalother UK-based organisations.

Clyde Space entered a Knowledge Transfer Partnership withthe University of Strathclyde about three years ago, and thetwo partners took up the UKube-1 challenge in 2010, as partof an initiative supported by the UK Space Agency to launchthe UK's first miniature satellite – a device which measuresonly 10cm x 10cm x 34cm.

UKube-1 (UK Universal Bus Experiment) will enablescientists to test new space technologies and carry out newspace research more cost-effectively and quickly, “makingup in innovation what they lack in size.” It will also carryexperiments selected from a competition open tocompanies and academics to come up with the mostinnovative ideas for payloads (see sidebar).

The UKube-1 project is a dream come true for CEO CraigClark, to help Scotland “enter the space race.” And as wellas being part of a project that promotes the newminiaturesatellites and inspires young people to get interested inscience, Clyde Space has effectively become its owncustomer, developing a CubeSat all of its own. “We have thefreedom to design and build exactly what we want ratherthan a custom-built solution,” says David Castle, who's incharge of manufacturing at Clyde Space.

“The best way to market space products is through theirsuccessful demonstration in orbit,” adds Clark.

Take-offThe Clyde Space story can be traced back to the early 1990s,when Clark studied power engineering at the University ofGlasgow – and dreamed about space flight. After graduatingin 1994, he spent 11 years at SSTL (Surrey SatelliteTechnology Ltd)*, working as a power systems engineer,gaining experience in mission design, spacecraft testing,on-orbit operations andmanagement. By the time he leftSSTL, he had worked on a total of 25 missions – five timesmore thanmost people work on throughout their career.

Soon after he returned to Glasgow, Clark set up ClydeSpace, to focus on power solutions for satellites, convincedthere was a niche in the market. He also wanted thecompany name to reflect the fact the River Clyde had oncemade 25 per cent of all the world’s ships – and perhaps inthe future could also make “spaceships.”

Soon after Clark returned from a space industry conferencein Japan, Clyde Space won a SMART: Scotland award fromScottish Enterprise, and started to develop power systemsfor a new generation of CubeSats – tiny satellites whichtypically measure 10cm x 10cm x 18cm and weigh about 5kg.

Profile ClydeSpace

There is an opportunity to dosomething different and developthe space business here – andcreate thousands of jobs in theprocess.

“I hadn’t heard about CubeSats before my trip to Japan,” saysClark, “but I recognised it as a great opportunity.”

The company won its first customer in 2006, supplying twosolar panels for South Africa's SumbandilaSat mission. Thiswas soon followed by orders fromMalaysia, Japan and the US.Today, its client list includes the European Space Agency, NASAand the US Air Force, as well as customers in Turkey, SouthAfrica, India, China, South America and Canada. The companyhas about a 30–40 per cent share of the global CubeSat powermarket, and has also supplied over 220 power systems forsmall satellites, making it the world's biggest supplier of thiskind of power solution.

Early last year, Clyde Space secured a funding package worth£1 million, led by private equity firm Nevis Capital, CoralinnLLP, Scottish Enterprise, the Science and Technology FacilitiesCouncil (STFC), the Technology Strategy Board and RegionalSelective Assistance, “to support innovation and growth acrossall company activities” as well as “to expand its product rangeand capability offering and increase its global market share.”This injection of funds has paid for a new 1,000-square-footclean room, as well as new automatic testing equipment.

Scotland’s space industry is currently worth only £20+ million ayear but Clark thinks Scotland has the potential to grow veryrapidly, taking advantage of the skills we already have and thegraduates coming on stream in subjects such as astronomy,physics, electronics and engineering.

Clark adds: “In Scotland, we can't compete with the big guyslike NASA, but there is an opportunity to do something differentand develop the space business here – and create thousands ofjobs in the process.”

* Formed in 1985, SSTL is a commercial spin-out from theUniversity of Surrey, specialising in the design of very smallsatellites. In 2008, the company was acquired and incorporatedas an independent British company within the EADS AstriumNV group.


CRAIG CLARK

UKube-1: The payload> TOPCAT – a device to measure the ionosphere andplasmasphere (the regions of space just beyond the Earth’satmosphere), to help GPS users cope with weather conditionsthat adversely affect the global positioning system (GPS) andits applications (e.g. satellite navigation and telecommunications).

> A payload to demonstrate the feasibility of a patent held byEADS Astrium on using the radiation environment for truerandom number generation.

> FunCube – a sub-system for educational outreach to studentsat schools and colleges.

> The Open University’s CMOS Imager Demonstrator instrument– developed as a collaboration between the OU’s Centre forElectronic Imaging and e2v technologies, a supplier ofscientific imagers for the space market. This will perform avariety of imaging tasks, including taking pictures of the Earthand providing an experimental test-bed for radiation damageeffects in space.

> myPocketQub – five experiments that UK students and thepublic will be able to interact with, including SuperSprite –a satellite-on-a-chip proof-of-concept experiment.

Clyde Space productsClyde Space makes high-performance subsystems for smallsatellites andmicrospacecraft, including standard productsavailable online and one-off products (bespoke designsincorporating heritage circuits or a completely new design).

The company also offers heritage systems for non-standardspacecraft, including in-house products and licensed productsfrom Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd (SSTL), as well as high-performance, bespoke designs for small satellite missions,including complete or part power conditioning and distributionsystems (PCDU), lithium polymer batteries, solar arrays andDC–DC Converters.

Electrical Power SystemsModular designs that can be easily configured for bespoke projects.

Spacecraft BatteriesSpace-qualified lithium polymer batteries that have undergoneextensive tests to assess their suitability for the spaceenvironment.

Solar PanelsSmall solar arrays for small satellites.

SpaceDC–DCConvertersHigh-efficiency, galvanically isolated andmultiple outputDC–DC Converters for space use.

Twice the powerClyde Space recently developed a “double deployable” solar panelsystem designed to increase the power available on board aCubeSat. The new system enables power to be generated fromthe front and the back of the deployed solar panel arrays –essential for missions that don't track the sun.

FACT>>>According to the UK Space Agency, the UK's space sectorcontributes £7.5 billion a year to the UK economy, directlyemploys 24,900 people and supports a further 60,000 jobsacross a variety of industries.

Photo

byIain

McLean

Bettervibrations


Core business: Noise and vibration solutionsLocation: EdinburghFounded: 2011Employees: 7Clients: AES, Hammerfest Strom

Frompneumatic drills to car engines, buildings andturbines, vibration is not just an irritation but amajordesign issue and a huge factor in costs. For example, ifyou could eliminate half of the vibration in awind turbinenear sensitive seismic equipment, it may be possible todouble the number of turbines installed in a site. If youcould reduce the vibration from railway lines, it may bepossible to build new houses closer to the tracks.And these are exactly the kinds of problemswhich XiEngineering Consultants has dealt with since thecompanywas formed in 2011.

Xi was born out of Reactec – a spin-out from the Universityof Edinburgh – but what makes the new organisation sodifferent is that instead of developing products andproviding consultancy services to finance R&D, Xi focuseson being a consultancy, providing off-the-shelf orcustomised solutions in industries including renewables,construction andmarine.

“Vibration is a problem which affects anything andeverything – even champagne on a luxury yacht,” says Ximanaging director Dr Mark-Paul Buckingham, who isnow a non-executive director of Reactec, the company hefounded in 2001. According to Buckingham, the threedrivers of the business are “performance, maintenanceand legislation.” Health and safety are of primaryimportance, but the bottom line is money – how tooptimise investment, extend the life of buildings orequipment, and reduce costs.

Profile Xi EngineeringConsultants

DR MARK-PAUL BUCKINGHAM

As a teamof highly-skilled engineers,we inherently like solving problems.


Buckingham graduated from the University ofEdinburgh in 2001 with a degree inmechanicalengineering, and developed the ideas for Reactecwhile he did his PhD there, focusing on vibration issuesin complex composite materials used in skis andsnowboards. For the next 3–4 years, he developed ageneric solution tomonitor andmanage the vibrationexperienced by individuals operating different equipment– a device which became the HAVmeter. Buckinghamalso won SMART: Scotland and SPUR awards todevelop and commercialise the control unit for thedevice. And at the end of 2005, hemade his first bigbreakthrough when he won an order for 750 unitsfrom Tarmac for a product which didn't exist yet.Banging the prototype vibration device on the table todemonstrate how robust the design was, Buckinghamconvinced Tarmac that he had the solution it needed,and then said his firmwould design it however thecompany wanted. It took another three years to finalisedetails, solving problems such as inductive chargingandmaking the device robust enough to deal with therigours of a construction site; but finally the HAVmeterdebuted in early 2008.

This was not the best time to be launching such aproduct – at the start of a recession in the company’skey industries – but Buckingham also continued todevelop his consultancy work, providing vibration analysisservices to companies such asWind Energy, Rolls Royceand Intel. Three years later, increased demand forconsultancy led to the spin-out of Xi, with £400,000 ofinvestment from sources including Archangel InformalInvestments and the Scottish Enterprise Co-InvestmentFund, plus a Board including former defenceministerAdam Ingram, ex-Lloyds TSB Scotland director ManusFullerton, and Gordon Stewart, ex-managing directorof PRTM, as Chairman.

When developing the prototypemeter, Buckinghamtargeted a number of specialist markets and conductedtrials with companies of all shapes and sizes to test theproduct to destruction; and this is one of the servicesXi now provides to its clients – helping to design outvibration and noise problems in advance, rather thanafter the event.

The irony of modernmaterials, Buckingham explains, isthat the lighter andmore efficient they become, so too thevibration problems worsen – e.g. the Forth Rail Bridgehasmuchmoremass thanmodern bridges and thereforevibrates less.

ComplexmodellingWhat gives Xi the edge is its use of advancedmathematical modelling software to predict andmeasurevibration, then diagnosing problems and developingsolutions – for example, creating virtual labs tomodelturbines. “Themodelling is complex andmust beprecise,” Buckingham says.

Buckingham describes what the company does as a“turnkey solution”, and is keen to demonstrate thepractical benefits – e.g. the company's work on theNewcastle Metro, building an acoustic trench to “bounceaway” vibration somore houses could be built beside thetracks. Xi is also helping Hammerfest Strom to ensurethat its ten tidal turbines have been “optimised forvibration” during a five-year trial for Scottish PowerRenewables in the waters off Islay. Small-scale turbinesalso present very similar problems, including thegearbox, while manufacturers of semiconductors alsoneed to reduce vibrations during production.

One of Xi's greatest challenges is to reduce the vibrationsin wind turbines, and for this it has developed theSeismically Quiet Tower (SQT), a hardware solution whichcan be retro-fitted to turbines or integrated duringconstruction, for any tower height and power capacity.The impetus for SQT came from a project to deal with theseismic issues of the Eskdalemuir Seismic Array, whichmonitors seismic events, including nuclear explosionsand earthquakes. Planners originally limited the numberof turbines which could operate in the area around thearray, so they wouldn't interfere with any instruments.But now, thanks to Xi, the power company canmultiplythe number of turbines and potentially release an extra£1 billion of investment, at the same time as producingmuchmore electricity.

So what is Buckingham's target for the first year ofbusiness?

“We want to provide added value to a greater number ofclients and assit them in solving problems and improvingproducts,” he says. “As a team of highly-skilled engineers,we inherently like solving problems.”

CanScotland lead thewayinhigh-speed trains?


Core business: Railway innovation

Key innovations: XiTRACK (geosyntheticreinforcement for railway tracks)andDART3D (ground vibrationsimulation software for railways)

Location: School of the Built Environment,Heriot-Watt University

Major contracts: NetworkRail, Balfour Beatty Rail

If Professor PeterWoodward got hisway, construction of theUK's next high-speed rail networkwould start in Scotland –tomorrow. “If wewant the northern economic base to grow,”he says, “we should build high-speed lines in the north first,not the otherway round.” And just for goodmeasure, addsWoodward, the trainswould be powered by renewableenergy, generated north of the border.

Woodward, who is Professor of Railway GeotechnicalEngineering in the School of the Built Environment atHeriot-Watt University, is not just an evangelist forhigh-speed trains, but also wants the UK to reclaim itstraditional role as a leader in rail innovation – a role whichhe believes has been eroded by an increasingly risk-averseindustry, as well as by the effects of lower-cost competitionfrom overseas countries since Victorian times, when theUK ruled the world in rail technology.

High-speed trains will dominate the future of the railways,says Woodward, and by the time HS2 (High Speed 2) iscompleted in 2026, other countries will be steamingahead. China, for example, plans to build 20,000kmof high-speed track by 2020, with trains achieving maximumspeeds of over 310mph, compared to 250mph on theLondon–Birmingham route – a distance of only 140 miles.More than 30 US states are currently investigating newhigh-speed railways, and Woodward thinks that Scotlandshould be taking the initiative, not just for economic but alsofor environmental reasons.

“Industry and academia need to work closely togetherto generate rapid progress in innovation and productdevelopment,” Woodward explains. “Now is the ageof the train!”

Woodward laments the UK’s reluctance to adopt newsolutions for railways, but says that innovation is stilltaking place here, despite this. To drive more innovation,Heriot-Watt is setting up the UK’s biggest testing rig forrailway technologies, and Woodward hopes that this willconvince industry to set up a national testing centre, tostimulate development and also boost exports.

“We can’t compete with countries like China when it comesto manufacturing widgets,” says Woodward, “but the UK hasgot the ability to develop innovations. Our problem is how tocommercialise these – for example, we developed the firsttilting trains but Italy now exports its Pendelinos to us.”

TheXiTRACKstoryWoodward's interest in railways developed in the late 1990s atHeriot-Watt, where he became a lecturer in 1994 after gaininghis PhD in numerical geotechnics from the University ofManchester. In his early career, he focused on earthquakeengineering, modelling ground waves and their effects on civilengineering structures – experience which he continues to usetoday in developing numerical modelling software for railways.

Initially, Woodward started looking at ground vibration wavesand how they affect the ballast on railway tracks. Ballast isgood at supporting the rails and helping drainage, but it alsotends to ‘densify’ and can break down, due to vibration fromtrains running over the rails, and eventually this affects thegeometry of the track – especially at switches and crossings– and requires regular maintenance. Some sections of trackneed checking once a year and others as often as every tendays. Anything which would prevent this would not only savemoney but also be safer.

Profile XiTRACK

PROFESSOR PETER WOODWARD

Now is theage of the train.

The needfor speedTrain speeds haveincreased in a numberof stages since thedawn of the steam agein 1803. “It took 100years to go from 5mphto 128mph,” saysProfessor PeterWoodward, “another76 years to reach198mph and only afurther 28 years toreach 357mph.”

In the quest forspeed, a wide rangeof technologies hascome and gone,including Hovertrainsand Aerotrains(jet-propelled), whileMagLevs (MagneticLevitation trains), firstdeveloped in the UKin the 1940s, achievedthe rail speed recordof 361mph in Japan in2003. This comparesto a Boeing 737 whichflies at a speed ofabout 490mph.

The UK’s firsthigh-speed railwaywas the ChannelTunnel Rail Link whichgoes at 186mph, whilethe planned HS2 trainis expected to run at atop speed of 250mph.

In 1999, one of Woodward’s colleagues wasinvolved in the replacement of the cobbles inEdinburgh’s historic Royal Mile, using polyurethaneto help reduce the wear and tear on the newcobbles, filling in the space around the cobblesmuch the same as using grout for tiles. And thisgot Woodward thinking –maybe a similar polymercould be used for the ballast on railways.Woodward then started discussions with thepolymer supplier, a company called Hyperlast, andstarted to develop a special solution for railways.

XiTRACKwas first trialled at Bletchley on thewest-coast line in early 2000 – points which usedto needmaintenance every threemonths.The new solution was installed while the trainswere still running, using a pneumatic pump toapply the polymer between the sleepers. And thetrial was so successful that the points did notneed any furthermaintenance until they weredecommissioned in 2011.

One of the special properties of the innovativegeocomposite solution is that it cures (or sets)at different rates, depending on the formula –e.g. it is poured into the ballast (like cream overstrawberries) and when it reaches a particulardesign depth (of between 100mm and 600mm),it stops running further. This means engineerscan control application tomeet individualrequirements. Other formulas have also beendeveloped to be effective in temperatures aslow asminus 40°C.

According to Woodward, one of XiTRACK’smajoradvantages is that it can be used to fix a problemovernight without interrupting the schedule.Concrete slabs are also low-maintenance options,but aremore expensive to build and replace, andtheir longevity is still being debated. “XiTRACKoffers the best of both worlds,” addsWoodward.

After the initial trial, Heriot-Watt University thenspun out a company called 2Ei to develop andmarket the product, and in 2001Woodwardfounded XiTRACK as a 50:50 joint venture withHyperlast Ltd (now the Dow Chemical Company).The company then won a contract from Railtrack toreinforce the track at 14 bridges nationwide, andWoodward started spending 25 per cent of his timeworking at XiTRACK – an arrangement which atthat time was highly unusual for academics.

The business started gainingmomentumwhenXiTRACK formed a partnership with Balfour BeattyRail and started a series of trials up to 2005, usingnew electrical pumps to install XiTRACK at thecontractor’s ‘worst sites’ – bridges, switches andcrossings where stabilisation was needed themost.In 2005, XiTRACKwas officially certificated by

Network Rail (which took over from Railtrack in2002) and the company was highly commended inthat year’s ‘Innovation of the Year’ category at the2005 National Rail Awards.

“There are twomain arguments for XiTRACK,”says Woodward. “First, it reduces themaintenancecosts. And second, it lowers the risks. Thetechnology has the capacity to virtually eliminatethe need for ballast maintenance, and BalfourBeatty Rail is now promoting the concept of‘tamperless’ switches and crossings.”

XiTRACK has been used in Italy and is also due tobe trialled at 25 sites in Germany and Hong Kong.Woodward comments: “Countries outside the UKaremore ready to use innovative solutions. Somepeople in the UK seem to think that if the Victoriansdidn't use the technology, we shouldn't use it – butif the Victorians had XiTRACK then, they would haveused it!”

Modelling softwareIn the process of developing XiTRACK,Woodwarddeveloped newmodelling software to “model everyaspect of the rail environment, including the effectof vibration on buildings and the people insidethem.”

One phenomenon which this reveals is somethingcalled “critical velocity.” Every type of groundsoilhas a ‘natural velocity’, with different densitiesabsorbing the ground waves at different velocities.

The new software, called DART3D (DynamicAnalysis of Railway Track 3D), simulates theseeffects and allows the engineers to work out howtomitigate vibration – whether thismeans layingconcrete rafts, improving the ballast usinggeosynthetics such as XiTRACK, or even reroutingthe track. “Different types of soil may react atdifferent speeds,” saysWoodward, “but the fasteryou go, themore it's a factor.”

Woodward and his academic colleagues, includingProfessor Michael Forde of the University ofEdinburgh, have successfully applied for EPSRCfunding for the simulation software and are also indiscussion with researchers in China to use it fornext-generation ultra-speed trainmodelling –travelling at over 250mph. “The Chinese are thenew Victorians,” says Woodward. “They just geton and do things.”

Over the last few years, Woodward has doneeverything from shovelling ballast to chairingboardroommeetings, in his quest for railwayinnovation. This year, he will give the keynotespeech at amajor conference in China, where hisideas could be critical in planning for the newhigh-speed network. His talk is entitled: Theapplication of polyurethane geocomposites to helpmaintain track geometry for ballasted high-speedrailway tracks. He is also giving talks this year onhigh-speed tracks in Japan, Australia and Spain(the latter is a keynote on ultra-speed). Will thesame ideas resonate in Scotland?


Powerfulideas


Core business: Electrical generatorsforwind turbines

Location: EdinburghFounded: 2009Funding: £4.4millionEmployees: 13

Withwind power gainingmomentumworldwide, anycompanywhich promises to cut the cost ofmanufacturing,assembling andmaintaining the turbines would be on to awinner – in a globalmarket where investment is expectedto bewell over £100 billion over the next ten years.

NGenTec aims to become “the preferred supplier ofdirect-drive and slow-speed permanent magnetgenerators for the wind energy market,” both offshoreand onshore, with its innovative drivetrain solutions.And what makes its technology so different is the modular,

“air-cored” design, which reduces the weight byapproximately 30 per cent and enables repairs andreplacement of parts without excessive operationaldowntime – thus reducing costs and improving overallenergy yield.

The company was spun out from the University ofEdinburgh’s School of Engineering in 2009 by Dr MarkusMueller and his colleague Dr Alasdair McDonald, andwithin two years it has assembled a management teamwith the credentials to match its technology, including CEODr Makhlouf Benatmane (ex-Converteam), CTO Dr NazarAl-Khayat (formerly with Williams Grand Prix Engineering),CFO Jim Boyd (former CFO at Aquamarine Power),and CMO Dr Charles Gamble (former CTO of NordicWindPower). Backing them up are non-executivechairman Dr Derek Shepherd (ex-Aggreko International)and non-executive director Dr Derek Douglas, CEO andchairman of investment firm Adam Smith Ltd (ASL).

ProfileNGenTec

DR MARKUS MUELLER

Mueller has returned to the researchlab, happy that the company is nowin themainstreamof the energybusiness and looking forward todevelopingmore powerful ideas.


The story starts in 2005 in Edinburgh, whenMuellerstarted trying to develop a new kind of direct-drivepermanent magnet generator (PMG) for wind turbines.Themajor problem, according to Mueller, is that windturbines rotate very slowly – 10–20 revolutions perminute(rpm) – whereas conventional electrical generators wantto rotate at thousands of rpm. A gearbox is required tostep up the speed, but the gearbox can fail. If a gearboxis not used, the generator rotates at the low speed ofthe turbine. Such direct-drive generators are large indiameter and very heavy – for example, a 5MWdirect-drive generator could weigh 150–200 tonnesand be 5–6m in diameter.

“The gearbox is not themost unreliable part of theturbine, but it’s responsible for most of the downtime,”says Mueller. And if manufacturers could get rid of thegearbox or develop a hybrid design, combining gearboxand direct drive, the turbines would bemore reliable,economical andmore efficient.

With generators, Mueller says, compromise is always thedifficult issue – between the structure, the electricalperformance andmechanical design. And NGenTec'smodular, lightweight design goes some way to achievingthe balance required, producing energy efficiently as wellas being easy tomaintain.

Mueller and his team have developed a number ofprototypes over the last few years, starting in the lab andlater moving out into the field, testing the design on fullyoperational turbines. The first prototypes were fundedby a $400,000 Proof Of Concept award from ScottishEnterprise, helped by additional funding from a SMART:Scotland award. After verifying the performance andmechanical, structural, electro-magnetic and thermalcharacteristics of the design, NGenTec was born and themanagement team came on board – adding theirexperience and industry contacts as well as their abilityto bring in investors.

The four founders – Mueller, McDonald, Douglas andShepherd – invested first, followed by SET VenturePartners of Holland and the Scottish Co-InvestmentFund (£1million each), plus a £800,000 grant from theDepartment of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) and£200,000 from the Edinburgh Technology Fund.

Anothermajor move has been the forming of anon-exclusive industry partnership with David BrownGear Systems, part of the Clyde Blowers Group, whichhelps NGenTecmanufacture and test its equipment.

The current challenge is to get a 1MW version into thefield and win the company's first customers, then build afull-scale (6MW) prototype – which will require about £6million in investment over the next two years.

After one year as the acting CTO, Mueller has returned tothe research lab, happy that the company is now in themainstream of the energy business and looking forwardto developingmore powerful ideas.

It’s a family affair


Core business: Visualisation and analysissoftware for the oil & gas industry

Incorporated: 1995 (first product launched in 2000)Employees: 18Turnover: £3millionMajor customers: Statoil, BP, Shell, Conoco,

Chevron,Marathon –120 customers in 80 countries

In 1995, Dr LindsayWoodwanted tomove back to Glasgow,but because he couldn't get a job in science, he decided tostart his own company, in partnership with his wife Angelaand his brotherWilliam. And 16 years later, Sciencesoft hasestablished itself as a leader in visualisation and analysissoftware for the oil and gas industry – and is still in familycontrol, with Lindsay now in charge of research anddevelopment, Angela director of business andWilliamlooking after sales andmarketing.

In the early days, the company sustained itself by providingconsultancy services to leading oil and gas companies,leveraging contacts in the industry built up by both of thebrothers, and behind the scenes developing its visualisationand analysis software, launched in 2000 as S3GRAF.

Today, the company's Reservoir Simulation Suite ofproducts, “help engineers analyse the results from reservoirsimulators by quickly producing 2D and 3D images of an oil

or gas field.” This enables companies to decide whetheror not to exploit the particular field.

Eleven years ago, bespoke products had been aroundfor many years, but they ran on proprietary systemsand supported a single vendor. The driving force behindthe new product was widespread industry demand fora solution which would work on different platforms,including Windows PCs. Other companies tried todevelop new software from scratch, but Sciencesoftalso recognised the need for a backwards-compatibleversion which provided a familiar user interface – allowingengineers to use existing data as well as reducing the timerequired for training.

Profile Sciencesoft

SCIENCESOFT SOFTWARE PROVIDES AN INTELLIGENT AND EASY-TO-UNDERSTANDPICTURE OF OILFIELDS AND GASFIELDS

L-R ANGELA, LINDSAY AND WILLIAM WOOD

With newproducts coming onstreameveryyear, the company is confident of steadygrowth in the future – as long as it retains its‘small is beautiful’ approach to the business.

ProductsSciencesoft currently focuses onone suite of specialist products,but it aims to develop fourmoreproduct lines over the next fiveyears, including pre-processingsoftware. It is also rewriting itssoftware to run on 64-bitplatforms – to “future-proof”its products. The ReservoirSimulation Suite includesS3GRAF, for automatingworkflow and displaying data,S3GRAF-3D and S3connect, atool for linking simulators, plusS3GRAF-HPG, which allowsreservoir engineers to load largesimulation data files in amatterof seconds – a process whichused to take over an hour.The company reinvests about50 per cent of its profits in R&D.

EducationlinksSciencesoft has worked witha number of universities overthe years, engaging in a widerange of research, and theresults from several projects arenow contained in the company’sproducts. For example, workingin conjunction with the Universityof Texas at Austin, Sciencesoftdeveloped a set of file readersfor the University’s UTCHEMchemical reservoir simulator,speeding up loading and outputfor rapid visualisation andanalysis.

Over the last ten years,Sciencesoft has also workedclosely with the University ofGlasgow and the Universityof Strathclyde, taking on 2–3student interns every summerand creating new employmentopportunities for computerscience and physical sciencegraduates. The company hasalso donated software worthover £5million to universitiesat home and overseas, andsponsors a PhD student inthe University of Glasgow.

According to Wood, engineers toldSciencesoft at the time that they liked howthe old software worked. They simplywanted amore open version with newimproved features, and Sciencesoft couldalso recognise themarket opportunity for amore cost-effective solution. “We believedthat our role was to solve people’sproblems,” says Wood, “not to build aminiempire or fight technological wars.”

Just before the product was unveiled in2000, the company (still a small team of fivepeople, with only two developers, includingLindsay Wood) knew it required an injectionof funds – not to help the final stages ofdevelopment but to beef up its sales andmarketing efforts. “We had our proof ofconcept, but we neededmarket presence,”Wood explains. Until then, the company hadfunded development with the revenuesfrom its consultancy work, and the productwas close to completion. Wood and the restof the family wanted to retain control of theircreation, but several potential investors saidthey were wrong – and proposed investingmuch larger amounts. In the end, however,Sciencesoft brought in a company calledMdina Investment, who provided funds of£200,000 –much less than the £5millionsome venture capitalists said was required.This amount wasmatched by Sciencesoft'sbank, backed by the appropriate insurance.“We wanted to look at the finance on ourterms,” says Wood. “Why spend £1millionon something we don't really need?”

The company strongly believed it shouldstick with its vision – an open, platform-independent solution, backed by world-classservice and responsiveness to customerneeds. The teamwas also happy to start offwith one or two sales to a few companies,and gradually build up its business, andStatoil of Norway was one of its earliestreference sites, buying several licences. Forthese initial customers, says Wood, S3GRAFsimply solved the problem by updating theold technology without interrupting theworkflow. Customers wanted a new,improved product that was easy to use anddisplayed better visuals, but nobody wantedto change overnight and abandon the oldways of working. Users also did not want tothrow away existing investments or learn acompletely new product.

The other key to the success of S3GRAFwasthat the engineers now had a visualisationtool which they could show to non-technicalpeople onWindows PCs – whatWooddescribes as “presentation quality.”

From a company standpoint, the technologywas not the only critical factor. “Whatenabled us to succeed,” says Wood, “wasthe fact that we were small and quick tosolve problems.” In addition, Wood believesit is important for developers tomeet thecustomers whenever they can – e.g. at tradeshows. “They speak the same language andalso know exactly what customers want.”

Looking back, Wood also says the companyspotted a gap in themarket because it washappy to handle small sales – for example,contracts worth £50,000 rather than the bigsums other companies wanted.

“Lots of companies like working with smallcompanies,” Wood says, “because theyknow that we can react very quickly anddeliver solutions.”

Since 2000, Sciencesoft has had a secondround of investment, with Aberdeen's NovaTechnology Fund putting in £350,000.The family has since regained the equityfromNova, allowing it to exit with a healthyreturn. Since 2002, Sciencesoft has hadan annual growth rate of 25 per cent, andturnover this year will reach £3million,with profits of £1million, and themanagement team have set a targetof £10m in turnover by 2014.

Growth has been steady but sure. Everyyear, the company has hired one or twoextra people, reaching its current headcount of 18, including six “high-endtechnical specialists” hired during the lasttwo years. The next two years will see aslight surge in the workforce, however,with staff numbers doubling as thecompany also doubles its office space.

For Sciencesoft, the harder it gets to exploitoil and gas fields, themore its products willbe in demand. And with new productscoming onstream every year, the companyis confident of steady growth in the future –as long as it retains its “small is beautiful”approach to the business.


Enlightenmentfor datacomms


Core business: Visible light communications (VLC)Location: EdinburghFounded: 2010/11Teammembers: 4

Proof-of-Conceptfunding: £400,000

The idea is not new – transmitting data via light – butHarald Haas and Gordon Povey, alongwith their colleaguesMostafa Afghani andWasiu Popoola, have bought theconcept into the digital age and transformed a bright ideainto an exciting new technology – and a new company.

Based in the University of Edinburgh, the D-Light project runby Haas and Povey is being spun out as a company calledPureVLC, ready to commercialise andmarket its system,focusing initially on niche applications such as oil & gasexploration andmines, where the sparks caused byantennae can be a hazard. Another big potential market isproviding an alternative to cabling for in-flight entertainmentin aircraft. Ultimately, every home and office could also beequipped with the technology, to provide extra bandwidthas well as security.

The “lightbulb” moment for Haas was when he realisedthat VLC was going to become a key technology thanks tothe increasingly widespread use of low-cost LED lightbulbs.Haas, who did his PhD at the University of Edinburgh(1997–99), then worked for Siemens in Munich and becamean Associate Professor at Jacobs University in Bremenbefore returning to Edinburgh in 2007 and becomingProfessor of Mobile Communications in 2010, started doingserious research in VLC in 2003. Two years later, hedemonstrated the system in action at an exhibition inBremen, then published a paper describing the scienceinvolved. At that time, his system transmitted data over avery short distance at a rate of only a fewMbits per second.

Today, the system is capable of 130Mbits per second over adistance of several metres, using standard LED lightbulbs,in real time, under normal lighting conditions. In fact, thecurrent speed is more than ten times faster than required fora quality video signal, and the error rate is less than one bitper 10,000 bits. The advance, says Haas, is largely down tousing “multiple data carriers” simultaneously – sending andreceiving multiple streams of data at the same time ascorrecting any errors.

Profile D-Light/PureVLC

PROFESSOR HARALD HAAS

The company iswell on itsway to turningthis idea into a commercial product – anda successful newbusiness.

VLC: HowitworksVisible LightCommunications (VLC)works bymodulatingstandard LED lightbulbs(i.e. varying intensity)without interfering withthe primary function oflighting, controlling thelight source to send outa signal then using adetector to receive it.Eventually the systemwill be an integral partof the lightbulb, added tothe electronics alreadybuilt into standard LEDlightbulbs.

VLC: Thebenefits> Low power consumption

> Does not causeelectromagneticinterference (EMI)

> Does not use valuableregulated RF spectrum

> Uses standard, low-cost,easy-to-install, long-lifewhite LEDs

> No health implications

> Security – signals don’ttravel through walls

Povey, now the CEO of PureVLC, thecompany spun out of D-Light, has knownHaas since the late 1990s and the formeracademic, now a businessman, quicklyrecognised the commercial potential ofHaas's new technology.

“Themore I looked at it, themore I gotexcited,” says Povey. In 2007, Povey wasstill involved with his own business, Trisent,which was purchased by Artilium in 2008.As an honorary fellow of the Universityof Edinburgh, with a PhD inmobilecommunications technology, Povey alsosawwhat Haas needed to transform his“brilliant idea” into a successful productand a profitable company. He also knewthey had to find a killer application – aproblem the technology could solve, notjust technological potential.

“The problemwas the spectral efficiencyof the existing radio network,” says Povey.Data traffic doubles every year, butscientists struggle to squeezemore outof the available bandwidth. In Povey’sopinion, it is better to market VLC as acomplement to WiFi, rather than as areplacement, providingmore capacityat much lower cost and alsomoreefficiently – avoiding problems such as

“electrosmog,” when signals interferewith each other.

In 2008, Haas submitted an unsuccessfulapplication to Scottish Enterprise for proof-of-concept (PoC) funding. This was a bigdisappointment, but the next year, withinput from Povey, he applied again andthis time got themoney he needed –approximately £400,000. With this funding,the team has advanced its research andthis year formed a company calledPureVLC, ready to take on the world.

Povey also says that rather thanpartnering with datacomms companiesor “reinventing the lightbulb,” D-Lightaims to partner with the lightbulbmanufacturers, providing added value totheir products, adding VLC capabilitiesto the silicon “real estate” on standardlightbulbs without increasing powerconsumption or costs.

According to Haas and Povey, “everyLED lightbulb can become a high-speedWiFi as well as a high-efficiency lightsource.” And the company is well onits way to turning this idea into acommercial product – and a successfulnew business.


Sensiblesensors


Core business: CO2 sensorsLocation: CumbernauldFounded: 2006Employees: 16Turnover: Approaching £1million

It's usually “last one out, turn out the lights,” but a newtype of sensor developed in Scotland by a company calledGas Sensing Solutions (GSS) promises to revolutionise thewaywemanage buildings by detecting howmany peopleare in different rooms, using smart wireless networks oflow-power sensors to optimise office conditions – andsave lots of energy andmoney in the process. Andaccording to GSS Chairman and CEODes Gibson, this isonly one ofmany applications for the new technology.

Gibson has 30 years’ experience in industry, includingspells at Barr & Stroud, Pilkington and Carclo plc, beforemoving on to set up three successful optical-basedbusinesses. With a PhD in thin film optics from Queen’sUniversity, Belfast, he also has a good understanding ofthe science involved in the development of GSS products.

The company was founded in 2006 by sales andmarketingdirector Alan Henderson, and Gibson first got interestedlater that year when he did due diligence on behalf ofTweed Renaissance Investors Capital (TRI Cap) and ScottishEnterprise Co-Investment Fund. And he liked the companyand its new technology so much, he not only invested hisownmoney but managed to get himself appointed theChairman.

“What stimulated me,” he says, “was the market potential.This was a new type of CO2 sensor for a wide range ofapplications – including building control systems – whichcould not only help to improve air quality and ensure safety,but also save energy and therefore money.”

The new technology was also very different. The sensorsdeveloped by GSS use a unique semiconductor-basedmid-infrared light source and detector combination.

In simple terms, this means using light to measure gas(CO2) levels based on the fact that different gases absorblight at specific wavelengths. And what gives the GSSproducts the edge is that they use solid state light sourcesand detectors instead of incandescent light bulbs andpydroelectric detectors, a new combination which greatlyreduces the power consumption and also speeds up theprocess – fromminutes to seconds.

Another key factor that clinched it for Gibson and otherinvestors was that this was a “legislation-driven” market,with authorities in the US, Europe and Asia about to put thefinishing touches to new regulations for building controls.And thanks to this new emphasis on energy efficiency,the GSS sensors will be used by leading building controlsystem suppliers, enabling offices to fine-tune theirheating, lighting and air-conditioning systems bymeasuring CO2 levels to calculate howmany people areusing particular spaces, and adjusting accordingly.

Profile GasSensingSolutions

You can have the best technology in the world, butfor successful commercial implementation, theessential focus has to be delivering innovative,on-time and cost-effective solutions themarketrequires. Effectivemarketing is essential toensure delivered technology is ahead of the curve.– Des Gibson, chairman & CEO of Gas Sensing Solutions

According to Gibson, GSS has two key advantages over all other gas sensor solutions.First, the device is battery-operated and requires no hard wiring. The sensors use upto 1/50th of the power of standard light sources and detectors, and they stabiliseimmediately so you canmeasure the level of gas straight away, unlike previous sensorswhich took up to ten minutes to warm up. And this adds up to 1/2,000th of the energyused andmeans a single battery will last for several years. Ultimately, the sensors willbe self-powered, using power-scavenging technologies such as solar cells.

Because the new technology is different, it also requires a new approach to production,and GSS has turned to the University of Glasgow to help it research and develop newmid-infrared sources and detectors. Moreover, the electronics and nanoscaleengineering research division at Glasgow University, headed by Professor Iain Thayne,is working with GSS to implement newmanufacturing methods which will result inhigh-throughput production capability.

As further evidence of the strong bonds between the two organisations, GSS andGlasgow University recently secured an industrial CASE Studentship, to focus onresearch to improve GSS's mid-infra-red device technology. The award is jointlyfunded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) and GSS.

The company is also working with the University of Strathclyde on research into optics,while the University of the West of Scotland's microsensors group is helping it modelthe sensors. “All three universities have worked well,” says Gibson, “and kept theirfocus. When universities work with industry, they need a change of mindset, and ourrelationship with all three has been highly successful.”

Because it clearly has significant market potential and has four patents, GSS hasattracted the interest of several investors and has already been through five roundsof funding. For the last five years, most of the company's efforts have been focusedon research and development, setting up a global distribution network, buildingpartnerships with industry and establishing production capability, but since it startedactive sales a year ago, turnover is already approaching £1 million.

Based in Cumbernauld, the company sources components from various countries,including China, and then integrates and calibrates all the components in-house, with ateam of 16 people running the show, including Henderson and Gibson, plus financialdirector John Burgon and engineering & operations director CalumMacGregor.

GSS recently secured first place in the regional final of a Shell Springboard Competition,based on the potential offered by the company’s products for energy reduction.

Building control systems promise to be a huge source of demand for the company’sproducts, but other markets also have significant potential, including horticulture, withnetworks of smart sensors helping to optimise plant growth, and safety applicationsin various industries, as well as mining, diving, automotive (in-cabin) and transportsystems. Future products will be used to measure methane – further extending thecompany’s market.


NewGSS sensorsGas Sensing Solutions (GSS)recently launched a new range of CO2sensors trademarked as COZIR,designed for use in battery-poweredapplications such as hand-held devicesand wireless systems, where low dutycycle is important tomaximisebattery life.

The benefits of the new sensors include:

> Low power consumption> Battery operated 3.3 volts> Auto calibration> Compatible with wireless

communications> Minimal power-up time> Standard digital output

The new sensors reach full accuracyless than two seconds after poweringup, and extremely low powerconsumption can be achieved bypowering down betweenmeasurements.

The sensors can be easily fittedinto handheld portable devices andwall-mounted control systems, andcome in two ranges:

> COZIR ambient (diameter 43mm,height 15mm) – for applicationssuch as heating, ventilation and airconditioning (HVAC), indoor airquality (IAQ), education andhorticulture.

> COZIR wide-range (diameter 18mm,height 20mm) – suitable for processcontrol applications such as diving,industrial, safety and automotive.

According to GSS, the new sensorsmeasure CO2 levels twice everysecond and consume only 3.5mW incontinuous operation – 50 times lessthan standard non-dispersive infra-red(NDIR) sensors. The new range utilisesGSS’s patentedmid-infrared optics andlight source detector technology.

GSS also recently launched anultra-high-speed version of thesensor called SprintIR, which samples20measurements per second.SprintIR is aimed at applicationsrequiring absolute real time CO2response, such as temporalmeasurement of CO2 exhalation,in-flow process control and analyticalinstrumentation.

WorldWideWebworld


Core business: Mobile visual searchfor advertising and retail

Location: Edinburgh

Founded: 2006

Employees: 1–10

Customers: Marketing&media companiesand retailers, including Tesco

What if you could point yourmobile phone at any product,take a photo and instantly access aweb site that tells youall about it, includingwhat it is andwhere to buy it, pricecomparisons and customer reviews, then press a button andbuy it?What if you could point at any object or image – e.g.exhibits in a gallery or cars in a showroom, a building, anadvertisement ormagazine cover – and also access all sortsof digital content includingweb sites, audio and video?

Most of us are already familiar with barcodes as well astheir more grown-up versions, QR codes, which provide akind of digital label that connects you, via a scanner orcamera phone, to the relevant web site. But a companycalled Mobile Acuity has developed a technology for mobiledevices which enables you to do the same – andmuch,muchmore – with ordinary images and objects, effectivelyturning the world into an extension of the World Wide Web,with web sites accessible via your camera by clicking onimages and three-dimensional objects, the same asclicking on a hot link in a document or browser.

This new technology is called “mobile visual search,” andit's aleady been adopted by major marketing companiesand retailers including Tesco, who are looking to integrateit into their e-commerce system.

Mobile Acuity founder and CEO Anthony Ashbrook hasspecialised in computer vision technologies for over 15years. Before coming to Scotland, he did his PhD in machineintelligence at Sheffield University and he has also workedwith companies including Vision Innovations, Virtual Mirrorsand C3D, better known now as Dimensional Imaging. In hisearlier commercial work, he focused on imaging, computervision and computer graphics, for industrial and nicheapplications, but mobile visual search is the mass-marketproduct he’s always been hoping to find.

The big ideaAshbrook's lightbulb moment came in 2003, whenmobilephones started appearing with a digital camera built in asstandard. The big idea was “the mobile that can see” – anew way to search just by pointing the phone, interrogatingimage databases just like a text search. “The mobile phonewith camera provided a platform for thousands of newapplications,” says Ashbrook, “for very little capital outlayby individual consumers.”

While still working as a consultant, Ashbrook teamed upwith Dr Mark Wright at the University of Edinburgh todevelop the idea of “image recognition applications forcamera phones” andmobile visual search – and MobileAcuity started taking shape as a commercial reality.

ProfileMobileAcuity

ANTHONY ASHBROOK

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The idea hasincredible potential.

MoremobilemoneyMobile Acuity recentlysecured amajor investmentfrom bieMEDIA, a US-basedonlinemarketing andmediasolutions company, and aScottish business angelnetwork fronted by StevenMorris and the University ofEdinburgh’s new investmentfund Old College Capital.The funds will be used toexpand the company’soperations into the USand East Asianmarkets.

Chris Wade, ExecutiveChairman of Mobile Acuity,says that the investment willnot only enable the companyto expand overseas anddiversify into new verticalmarkets but “also allow usto continue to grow andinvest in local skills andresources.”

Jon Barocas, CEO ofbieMEDIA, believes theinvestment will revolutionisethe way its clients andconsumers interact“by offering compellingweb, video andmobilecommerce experiencesand opportunities.”

After winning £120,000 proof-of-conceptfunding from Scottish Enterprise to advanceits research from 2004 to December 2005, thecompany was founded in early 2006 as a spin-out from the University of Edinburgh, backed bya private investor. Within a year, Ashbrook andco-founder Wright had a commercial productready for market and quickly won businessfrommajor brands such as Disney and Nike,but it took a fewmore years to establish arecurring revenue stream for the business.“Six years later this technology is still justemerging – we were way ahead of themarket,which in itself is a challenge,” says Ashbrook.

The question for Mobile Acuity in the early dayswas: “We have a great technology but how canwemost effectively turn this into a business?”

One idea was to develop an app which wouldrecognise virtually everything, but howwouldyou convert that into profits? Tomake theproduct work for every object in the worldwould also take an army of assistants workingfor thousands of years – collectingmillions ofimages, identifying and classifying every singleimage, then building the database. Apart fromthe enormous investment required before youwould start to earnmoney, this wouldmeancompeting head-on with established industrygiants such as Google, which already collectsmillions of images from its own users.

Ironically, the launch of Google “Goggles,” animage recognition application which works in asimilar way to the system developed by MobileAcuity, has been a very positive thing for theyoung Scottish start-up, because it made thetechnologymuch better known andmorewidely accepted – potential customers alreadyknow that mobile search is practical and amajor technology player is leading the way.

What makesMobile Acuity different, however,is that it does not intend to compete in thesamemarket sector. Instead of building upa universal database withmillions of images,it goes to customers who have their ownspecialist images ready compiled, and providesa solution which enables that client’sconsumers to point at a product or an imageof a product in an advertisement or othervisual media, and search an image database,using their ownmobile phones and a specialdownloadable app – to browse informationand alsomake purchases.

“The customer who has themost potential forus is the one who wants to give its consumersthe best user experience,” says Ashbrook.

Firstmajor breakthroughsWinning amajor contact from Tesco is a hugeadvance for Ashbrook and his colleagues.Last year, the retail giant issued a tender fora new barcode reader solution for mobiles,andMobile Acuity came out the winner in ashoot-out with a number of internationalcompetitors.

The initial specification was simply forbarcodes, but Ashbrook reveals that he“sneaked in a camera button” whichdemonstrated extra capabilities, includingmobile visual search. Tesco’s Grocery app hasbeen downloaded and used formillions ofscans.

Another recent breakthrough was apartnership with TurnIntoCash.com, enablingusers of the company’s website to work outhowmuch their oldmusic and film collectionsare worth, integrating Mobile Acuity barcodescanning technology across all mobile phoneplatforms, including iPhone, Android andBlackberry, and “working together to addfuture visual search functions to the apps.”As ameasure of its impact, the iPhone appwas downloaded over 1,000 times in its firstfull week on the iTunes store.

Another partnership with “digital mediadelivery company” 7digital will enable users to“discover” music by pointing their phones at animage on a CD cover or another visual mediumto access information then decide whether topreview or download and purchase themusic.

Mobile Acuity does not earn its revenuesfrom selling software licenses but providesan “unbranded solution” and then deploys aweb-based service to clients, hosting thedatabase and processing queries from users.

In the longer term, the company will generateits revenues by earning royalties from usageand the number of transactions. “We wantto be in the transaction path,” Ashbrookexplains, “andmonetise the process.”

The idea has incredible potential. For example,Tesco operatesmore than 5,000 stores in 14countries and had revenues of over £60 billionin the last financial year. It reportedly sells 1.5billion bananas a year and delivers over onebillion items to customers’ homes every year.If Mobile Acuity earned a commission everytime a Tesco customer used its mobile app topurchase a product...


What comesaround...


Core business: Dynamic digital displays including360° inflatable and acrylic spheres

Location: Edinburgh

Founded: 2004

Employees: 8 full-time, plus regularsub-contractors

Turnover: £1million in 2010–11

Clients: Symantec, NASA,METOffice, BBC,Coldplay, OPEC, Grolsh, IBM, Optos,Boeing, VirginMoney, Amway

When the newNational Museum of Scotland opened inJuly, one of itsmost innovative exhibits was a 2-metredigital sphere displaying geology-focused content stories,developed by a companywhose office is only a fewhundredmetres away from the revampedmuseum. Thisyear, a similar 1.8-metre-diameter sphere has also beeninstalled in the London Stock Exchange, while smaller90cm spheres, also permanent exhibitsmade of acrylic,have gone on show at the National MaritimeMuseum in

Greenwich and the Royal Scottish Geographical Society inPerth.With other clients ranging from theWagner Festandmusical legends such as Coldplay, who used itsspherical displays – PufferSpheres – for special effectson a record-breakingworld tour, to high-tech companiessuch as IBM, O2, Symantec and Google, Pufferfish is fastestablishing a global reputation for its specialistprojection solutions.

Pufferfish Ltd emerged from the University of Edinburgh in2004, when its co-founders Oliver Collier and Will Cavendish(now Technical Director) had an idea for an innovative digitaldisplay which would enable them to project images onto asphere, in sharp focus on every part of the surface. Sevenyears later, the company has gone through several roundsof investment, including substantial funding from theBraveheart Investment Group, plus further backing fromScottish Enterprise’s Scottish Co-Investment Fund andseveral private investors, and built up a who's who of clientsin countries all over the world, selling and renting solutionsfor events and permanent exhibits in America and Asia, plusthe Middle East and all around Europe.

Profile Pufferfish

Wehave an open approach tosupplying solutions, butwealwayswant tomake sure thateverythingworks.


In 2002, Collier (music & physics) and Cavendish(who studied architecture) had developed a prototypesystemwhich responded to MIDI (musical instrumentdigital interface) sensors, and spent many hours glueingspheres together with solvent before the undergraduateproject became a serious business proposal. TheEdinburgh Pre-Incubator Scheme (EPIS) gave thebusiness early-stage financial support when it wasestablished in 2004, and early on Collier and Cavendishalso won a SMART: Scotland award, matched byBraveheart, which enabled it to fine-tune its technologyand develop its marketing strategy.

The technology has progressed out of all recognitionsince those early days, but the company has also evolvedsince it entered the business arena, providing a completepackage of services, as well as hardware and softwaresolutions. According to sales andmarketingmanagerBen Allan, the key to success has been the company's“hands-on” approach and its international network ofpartners, as well as its technology and understanding ofcontent. Its partners come in different shapes and sizes,but many of them have a lot of rental experience –essential when somany clients use Pufferfish displaysfor one-off events.

Every client means a different challenge, says Allan.One day, he is talking to the Ruhrtriennale (Wagner Fest)in Germany, using PufferSpheres for a production of theopera Tristan & Isolde, and the next it is the BBC, shootinga trailer in Cape Town. The companymade its first sale in2006 and, as the years went by, continued to develop itssolution and reduce prices. In financial year 2010–11, itsgross sales topped £1million, including 40 PufferSpheresof different dimensions.

The technologyThe breakthroughmade by Pufferfish was to developspecial lenses and projection techniques to displayimages (output from standard projectors made bycompanies such as Projection Design, Christie and Barco,etc.) onto a spherical surface from sources including a

laptop computer or media server, converting (or“spherising”) digital content designed for a flat surfaceonto a sphere, so every single pixel remains bright andequally focused. The processmay seem simple, butPufferfish is clearly a few steps ahead of its rivals, whohave struggled to provide a higher-quality or lower-pricedalternative. The principles of the core technology are“essentially the same,” Allan explains, but they havelearned a lot along the way not just about projectors andlenses but also thematerials and coatings used forspheres, many of which are inflated on site in amatter ofminutes, like balloons. The technologies are also open,says Allan, so PufferSpheres can integrate withmostothermedia systems, including specialist devices.

What makes the technology so different, says Allan, is theoriginal design of special “omni-focus” lenses, plasticcoatings and novel projection techniques, with imagescontrolled by special software. But another key differenceis attention to detail and the flexibility to build solutionsmatched to client needs – for example, spheres robustenough tomeet strict safety standards at the same timeas being easy to transport, maintain and install.

For Allan, one of his proudest achievements is whensomeone comments on one of its systems by saying“that's a Pufferfish,” as if the brandname is alreadyrecognised as generic – like Thermos or Hoover.But even though its systemsmay give Pufferfish the edgein this particular technology, Allan also believes that theservice it offers is what makes the critical difference.“We focus on being the company people want to workwith,” he explains. “We have an open approach tosupplying solutions, but we always want to make surethat everything works.”

Pufferfish has come a long way in the last seven years,but it still keeps in very close contact with the universitywhere it all started, and a new generation of studentsin the Informatics Department is now using Pufferfishsystems to develop innovative interactive displays –as if the spherical idea has come full circle.

Helpingmachinessoundmorehuman


Core business: Speech synthesis

Location: Edinburgh

Founded: 2005

Employees: 12 full-time engineers includingthemanagement team

WhenMatthewAylett answers the phone, some peoplemaywonder if it is him or not. After all, his company(www.cereproc.com) is one of theworld's leading developersof speech synthesis systems, and hemay just be trying outone of its latest creations.

There are many bad examples of speech synthesis systems,including speak-your-weight machines and Daleks.Text-to-speech or TTS technology can also have its funnyside – e.g. the American editor who wasn't aware StephenHawking was English because of his “American” accent.Voice synthesis is also nothing new – Alexander Graham Bellalso tried to develop a Speaking Machine. But according toAylett, robot-like voices will soon be a thing of the pastas machines learn to speakmore like humans, thanks torecent technological advances.

“We give machines a personality, character and emotion,”says Aylett. “We can also clone human voices, duplicatingthem so amachine can use the voice, or humans canreplace their own voices.”

Aylett, who is Cereproc's chief technical officer andco-founded the company with Paul Welham and ChristopherPidcock six years ago, is a self-confessed evangelist for“characterful” voices for machines. “I want to get theindustry to move past conventional command and controlsystems,” Aylett explains.

It is ironic that when CereProc first developed its interestin voice synthesis, many industry pundits did not see theappeal of more human-like voices. The orthodox opinion wasthat machines should sound neutral, but Aylett questionedthe value of the “unearthly” voices of so many systems.

Aylett's interest in creating emotional voices started eightyears ago, when his sister was investigating “bullying” aspart of a the “FearNot” project at Heriot-Watt University andasked him if he could produce five “expressive” characterfulchild voices to help her research. Aylett, then a seniorengineer in a TTS company called Rhetorical Systems whichspun out of Edinburgh University in 2000, realised that thecurrent technology needed to be improved to achieve thisgoal.

Rhetorical was later bought by Nuance (formerly Scansoft),and after a spell working at the International ComputerScience Institute (ICSI) at Berkeley, California, Aylett teamedup with Pidcock and Welham to form Cereproc, “lamentingthe lack of innovation by speech technology companiesaround the world.”

Profile Cereproc

Speech is the naturalman-machine interface.

CereprocpartnersCereproc works with severaluniversities in the UK andabroad, including theUniversity of Edinburgh(particularly the Centreof Speech TechnologyResearch in the Schoolof Informatics), StanfordUniversity, the FundacioBarcelonaMedia andHeriot-Watt University,which is using Cereproctext-to-speech technologyin the development ofrobots with character.Its commercial partnersinclude InteractiveDigital, ReadSpeaker,SpeechConcept and JayBee.

The emotionalcontinuumCereproc uses two separatemethods to simulateemotional states. The first isto select tense or calm voicequality. This comparesclosely with the perceptionof negative and positiveemotional states (and tosome extent active orpassive). The second is touse digital signal processing(DSP) techniques to alter thespeech to active or passivestates. Active states involvefaster speech rate, highervolume and higher pitch.Passive states involve slowerspeech rate, lower volumeand lower pitch.

The stronger the emotion,the harder it can be tosimulate. This is becausethe DSP ‘tricks” used tosimulate emotions beginto include “artefacts.”For example, slowing thespeech rate and loweringthe pitch with a negativevoice quality will make thevoice sound sad – and theslower the sadder – untilthe speech soundsartificially slowed downand unnatural.

Thus, although we cansimulate a wide variationin the underlying emotionof voices, we do not havecomplete control. We cannotmake our voice soundfurious or in agony.

Academics, says Aylett, tend to look forpublishable, theoretically interesting ideas, whilecommercial enterprises need end results.Cereproc, he says, has taken a “mixed approach”to advance its technology, in the quest to developmore characterful voices. The classic industryapproach was to think in terms of male or femalevoices, and there was little incentive to createsomething better. But Cereproc’s founders haddifferent ideas.

Initially, the company's resources were ploughedinto developing the “voice-building process,” sothey could produce a wide variety of voices easilyand quickly to meet different client requirements.Choosing the right accent for particular uses canbe an interesting challenge, says Aylett, becausemany accents are “loaded” with their ownassociations. Realistic-sounding speech can beimportant, but if an automatedmachine is statingyour bank balance, for example, neutral speechmay bemore appropriate. On the other hand, toread out an entire paragraph, the voice has to haveamore “natural” tone to convey complexmeaning– or it will sound very boring.

To explain this process, Aylett refers to the“emotional continuum” of voice synthesis systems,including the basics of “happy or sad, positive ornegative, active or passive” (see sidebar). Tomakea voice sound human, it should be capable ofspeaking in a natural manner that seems toappreciate context andmeaning, etc., but Aylettalso cautions that the aim is not to misdirect or“trick” the listener but simply make themachinesoundmore “normal.”

The growth of the voice synthesis market has alsobeen driven by changes in other technologies suchas smartphones and tablet computers, which comewith built-in microphones and are starting topopularise speech recognition solutions. A fewyears ago, it was thought the killer applicationwould be automated travel agents, “speaking” tocustomers over the phone, but visual presentation(e.g. websites) for some applications will always bemuchmore effective.

Like the Daleks, voice synthesis once had a badreputation, says Aylett, and the technology was“a design-free zone,” but this is now rapidlychanging. Voice synthesis is not always themostappropriate interface, however. We don’t need ourtoasters to tell us the toast’s burned, for example,but voice sythesis systems are now going through arenaissance, because they’re being used inmoreappropriate ways. “The problem is designing it soit is right,” Aylett says.

Speech synthesis systems are also beginning tospread intomore andmore aspects of life, not justelectronic games and voice-response systems butmobile and virtual devices, including “smarthomes”, where technology “speaks” to peoplewith disabilities such as impaired vision.

Another application gaining in importance is“aggregated data” systems combined with TTS –for example, a “personalised radio” systemwhichcan search the web for news alerts and thenread them out, in the voice of your choice, as acustomised “package,” while you are driving.Other alerts could be set up for air fares or specialpromotions –much the same as “live” trafficannouncements. Radio, says Aylett, is making acomeback, and “push-down” (as opposed to“pull-down”) data systems could be part of thisresurgence. “We are wading through a sea ofinformation,” says Aylett, and using TTS couldturn it into a “rich audio experience.”

Aggregated data was one of three Cereprocprojects funded by Scottish Enterprise under theSMART: Scotland programme, starting in 2006,when the company received a grant for £50,000 todevelop a semi-automated voice synthesis system.Voice cloning is another exciting area for Cereproc– and not just for fun. If people are about to losetheir voices because of amedical problem, thevoices can be sampled and then reproduced sothey sound “just like themselves.” A humorousexample of this kind of technology can be heard athttp://www.idyacy.com/cgi-bin/bushomatic.cgi,where you can type in words and listen to PresidentBush say whatever you want him to say.

Cereproc has sometimes swum against the tideas it developed speech synthesis systems, but hasnow established itself as an industry leader.In Aylett's view, the future of the company dependson “staying at the cutting edge of the technology,”because for such a relatively small business tosurvive, it has to be one step ahead of its rivals.Cereproc’s success so far has come from thefreedom small companies have to pursue theirown vision, and Aylett believes this has enabledit to bemore innovative – and will continue tohelp it in future.


Science Scotland – bringing you the best of Science andTechnology from Scotland – is published by The RoyalSociety of Edinburgh, with support from:

The Scottish Government is responsible for most of theissues of day-to-day concern to the people of Scotland,including health, education, justice, rural affairsand transport.

The Royal Society of Edinburgh, Scotland’s nationalacademy, was founded in 1783 and the Fellowship todayincludes some of the best intellectual talent in academia,the professions and business. The RSE facilitates publicdebate, research programmes, educational projects andstrategy formulations. Its strength is its diversity andimpartiality. The Society’s unique multi-disciplinaryapproach enables it to draw from and link with a broadspectrum of expertise to enhance the understanding ofglobally-important issues. In fulfilling its Royal Charter forthe ‘advancement of learning and useful knowledge’, theRSE seeks to contribute to the social, cultural andeconomic wellbeing of Scotland.

To view Science Scotland online, please go to:www.sciencescotland.orgFor more information, please contact:[email protected]

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