m aking the invisible visible

36 Pages·2017·2.21 MB·English

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QUANTIC
The UK Quantum Technology Hub in

Quantum Enhanced Imaging
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QuantIC Innovation Space
QuantIC
James Watt South Building N
University of Glasgow
Glasgow, G12 8QQ
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Annual Report
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[email protected]
quantic.ac.uk
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Follow us: @QuantIC_QTHub
2017
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QuantIC
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Annual Report
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2017
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Foreword
W
elcome to QuantIC’s third annual report. We are more than
halfway through the first five years of the UK National
Quantum Technologies Programme (UKNQTP) which has
successfully drawn industry’s attention to the business opportunities
created by translating quantum science out of the research lab. To
date, QuantIC has supported 33 industry-led projects, investing £2.8M
and leveraging £2.3M of industrial support. These projects all utilise
quantum technologies to develop competitive advantage in terms of
functionality, performance or cost.
While the development of a quantum technology industry in the UK
is still in its infancy, the unique structure of the UKNQTP, which brings
together academia, industry and government, has given the UK a head-
start in the international race to industrialise quantum technologies.
However, much work will be necessary to retain the momentum created
and to secure a large share of the emerging global market. QuantIC is
in a good position to meet this challenge head on. Over the next two
years, we expect a number of QuantIC products will be taken to market,
both in collaboration with industry partners and as new spin-out
companies.
Quantum technologies have been selected by the UK Government as
one of fourteen ‘core industrial challenges’ to be tackled through its
Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund (ISCF). As planning begins for the
next phase of the UKNQTP, there is an opportunity to build on the
integration of industry and academic assets initiated by the Quantum
Technology Hubs. QuantIC’s continued collaboration with industry
and potential Innovation Centres to produce a supply chain could also
underpin other ISCF challenges, such as such as self-driving vehicles,
satellites and space technology and leading edge healthcare.
At QuantIC, we’re excited to see what lies in store for the future of
quantum technologies in the UK as part of an evolving landscape of
research opportunities. We look forward to continuing collaboration,
maintaining confidence and momentum and widening and deepening
existing industrial networks to ensure we capitalise on the investment
made so far in delivering value to the UK economy.
Professor Steve Beaumont Professor Miles Padgett
Director Principle Investigator
Fresnel Cones demonstrator exhibited at the 2017 National Quantum
Technologies Showcase. Photo Credit Dan Tsantilis & EPSRC
4 5
Table of Contents National Quantum
Technologies Programme
P. 2
Foreword
QuantIC is one of four UK Quantum Technology Hubs established as part of the £270M
government investment in the UK National Quantum Technologies Programme (UK-
NQTP). The aim of the UK-NQTP is to accelerate the translation of quantum science into
economic and societal impact for the benefit of the UK.
P. 5 The vision of the UK-NQTP is the creation of a coherent quantum technology community
Who we are
where government, academia and industry collaborate to secure a leadership position for
the UK in the emerging multi-million pound quantum technology market.
P. 7
QuantIC Year 3
QuantIC
QuantIC is the UK centre of excellence for research, development and innovation in
P. 10
Innovation quantum enhanced imaging. Led by the University of Glasgow, it brings together more
than 120 full time researchers from the Universities of Bristol, Edinburgh, Heriot-Watt,
Oxford, Strathclyde and Warwick with more than 40 industry partners.
The Hub is led by Professor Steve Beaumont, QuantIC’s Director, and Professor Miles
Padgett, QuantIC’s Principal Investigator and Scientific Lead. The day to day operation
P. 24
Technology Development of the Hub is supported by a growing and dedicated central team to ensure its smooth
operation and to appropriately resource our outreach and industrial engagement
activities.
P. 38
Stakeholder Engagement
Our Vision
P. 52
Governance Our vision, shaped in collaboration with over 40 industry partners, is to pioneer a family
of multidimensional cameras operating across a range of wavelengths, time-scales
and length-scales, creating a new industrial landscape for imaging systems and their
applications in the UK. QuantIC’s approach to user engagement and innovation includes
a strategy aimed at exploring with industry the potential for quantum technologies to
improve products and processes in the imaging sector.
P. 56
Appendices
6 7
Quantic
Year 3
Over the past year, QuantIC has built on existing partnerships in the UK and
grown its international presence at major exhibitions.
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ince our inception in December 2014, we have focused on our mission to deliver
improved imaging technology to users by translating cutting edge research into
prototype components, cameras and systems. In our third year we continued
to push towards this goal through industry collaboration, research excellence and
stakeholder engagement.
Our Partnership Resource programme has continued to grow with an additional £2.4m
investment into projects in year three, including 7 Phase 2 demonstrator projects.
QuantIC also continued to support skills development through the QuantIC Industrial
Studentship programme introduced last year. We have now awarded £490k across 12
industry-led projects.
Our Innovation Space is helping to accelerate industrial innovation by offering space
for companies to co-locate with QuantIC researchers. In Year 3, the Innovation Space
hosted industry partners such as Dstl, Chromacity, and Bridgeporth and to support the
development of a new start-up, Pyxl.
The quality of our research has been internationally recognised; our academics have
delivered 122 talks at international conferences and published 72 papers in high-level
journals in our third year. Year three also saw us host collaborative workshops with the
UK Technology Hub for Sensing and Metrology to find ways to improve and develop our
technologies through greater collaboration.
Improvement of our demonstrators has allowed us to take our technology on the road
to two high-profile international exhibition events, Photonics West in the United
States and Laser World of Photonics in Munich. QuantIC also contributed twelve
exhibits to the third National Quantum Technologies Showcase, including improved
and brand-new demonstrators such as the Single-photon Underwater Imager and 3D
Fusion demonstrators.
In 2017, QuantIC expanded its stakeholder engagement through membership
of Technology Scotland, which provides us with connections to many emerging
technology industries. QuantIC continued to host industry-focused workshops leading
to increased interest in the automotive and health industries, further expanding our
range of industry applications.
Year 3 also saw the growth of the QuantIC Central Team, with the recruitment of a
Business Development Executive and a Project Officer. The increased capacity has
allowed us to take on every opportunity to grow our impact.
QuantIC continues to maintain a high standard of research and industry engagement
and in the coming years we will continue building our vision to create a new industrial
landscape for imaging systems and their applications.
Horiba Microscope demonstrator built using QuantIC components at the 2017
8 National Quantum Technologies Showcase. Photo Credit Dan Tsantilis & EPSRC 9
3 Years In Numbers
QuantIC has come a long way since its inception three years
ago. Here is an overview of what we’ve achieved so far:
Technology exhibited
6
Recognition Of at major events
Our World-Leading
0Industry
12Industry-led
Research Team
visits
5
Institute of Physics; Royal Society; projects
Royal Society of Edinburgh;
Leverhulme Trust; Optical Society of America >
Innovate UK and Centre for Defence and
Engaged
Enterprise projects for a total value of £1.9M.
9 Patent 4 New/
>100
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protected Improved
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technologies companies Technologies
7 8
NEW
1 0 3
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£ research 2
.
0
awards 3
£
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1
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6 Companies Funding Leveraged
>
papers >200
accessing Funding Invested
published 32
Innovation
Talks at
12
Space
Partnership meetings and
Studentships Resource Projects conferences
10 11
Innovation
Industry Partners
QuantIC is bringing quantum technology to bear on real world QuantIC is grateful to the companies who have engaged with us
imaging challenges, across the industrial, scientific, security and through our Partnership Reseource Fund projects and Industrial
consumer markets. Studentship Programme.
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ndustrial engagement drives our research. We are collaborating with industry leaders
and technology users to accelerate imaging innovation in alignment with market
priorities and national/international needs. This will ultimately lead to commercial
applications that will benefit the UK economy.
A major aspect of our industry engagement is the £4m Partnership Resource Fund
(PRF) which has been targeted at projects that demonstrate the applicability
of QuantIC technologies to solve real-world imaging problems and to accelerate
technology readiness in partnership with an industry collaborator. The fund is
managed by our industry-led board, the Market Opportunities Panel, ensuring market-
awareness and industrial oversight in the allocation of the fund. PRF projects are
aimed at determining whether a technology has the potential to offer a competitive
edge in terms of new functionality, improved performance or cost reduction (Phase 1)
or to progress the development of quantum enhanced imaging technologies to higher
Technology Readiness Level (Phase 2). The key assessment criteria for projects is an
attractive business proposition with a route to exploitation for an emerging technology
in the field of quantum imaging. The PRF bridges the gap between industry and
academia and is designed to accelerate the uptake of quantum technologies which
will give a competitive edge to UK industry whether through new products, enhanced
functionality of existing products or lower costs.
In 2017 the Market Opportunities Panel approved 15 new applications with a total
project value of over a £2.4m and leveraged an additional £1.7m of industrial
contribution. These awards build on the 17 projects approved in the first two years
of operation, bringing our total funded portfolio to £5.8m. Our third year has seen
a significant rise in the number of larger Phase 2 projects as the technologies are
progressing towards commercialisation. A list of all of the funded PRF projects can be
found in the annex at the end of the report.
QuantIC continues to support companies by offering a fully funded Industrial
Studentship Programme and partnering on projects funded through Innovate UK,
Centre for Defence and Enterprise (CDE), or the forthcoming Industrial Strategy
Challenge Fund. The studentship programme, designed to develop both academic
and technical excellence in the next generation of quantum engineers, has seen an
additional 4 Industrial Studentships awarded this year. To date QuantIC has invested
over £500K in 12 industry-led studentships, and collaborated in 11 Innovate UK and
Centre for Defence and Enterprise projects at a total value of £1.9M.
12 13
From the QuantIC
Market Opportunities Panel
The QuantIC Market Opportunities Panel (MOP) manages the £4 Million
Partnership Resource Fund. Panel member Robert Lamb explains the role of
the MOP and the importance of the projects it supports.
“
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ince its inception the Quantum Technology Hub for Enhanced Imaging QuantIC
has benefited from strong industrial collaboration. It has forged close working
relationships with industry across a wide range of applications which have
demonstrated the use of quantum technologies in innovative technical solutions to
industry-defined problems. QuantIC’s engagement with industry is spearheaded by
its Market Opportunities Panel (MOP). The MOP comprises technologists from leading
manufacturing organisations and representatives from Innovate UK and EPSRC.
The MOP can therefore provide a wide range of advice to QuantIC on wider industrial
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engagement and the opportunities for commercial exploitation. It also provides ro
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collective advice to the QuantIC management and input to the national QT Strategy R
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which sets out the case for continued government investment in quantum technology. L
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Another important role is to support quantum technology development, sensor w
demonstrators and feasibility studies. These are industry-led projects funded through ith
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the MOP and provide support for academics to demonstrate the proof-of-principle r M
of emerging quantum technology in close collaboration with and led by an industrial a
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partner. These projects are typically 4-24 months long and provide both parties with he
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valuable insight into the practical application of emerging technology. To date 32 E
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projects have been funded to develop a wide range of single photon counting and ga
low-light level imaging concepts. These first steps are essential in forging the new r at
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collaborations, partnerships and the new technology exploitation routes necessary for he
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the successful commercialisation of the Quantum Technology Revolution.” u
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Prof Rob Lamb is Airborne & Space Systems Division Chief Technical Officer (EO) at IC
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Imaging Based
Integrated imaging, navigation and data
Communications
systems for autonomous mobile agents
A Partnership Resource Project in collaboration with
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L Aralia systems
ED lights are commonly used in lighting rooms and at QuantIC we are developing
ultrafast LED illuminations capable of both projecting structured patterns and of
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communicating with robots, cameras etc. The patterns enable the devices to self- t is widely forecast that Ultra Wide Bandwidth (UWB) networks will be a disruptive
locate and the information can direct them to undertake tasks. technology for Autonomous Mobile Robots (AMRs), facilitating greatly improved machine
vision processing performed remotely at fixed locations. LiFi UWBs provides an unlicensed
Video surveillance is becoming an indispensable tool to ensure both personal and
solution that is both secure and safe. Recent work has shown that LiFi offers superior
public safety. Common applications include monitoring of critical infrastructure,
telecommunications performance to WiFi for AMRs in complex indoor environments. AMRs
financial institutions, airports and public transport gateways as well as private
must be able to understand their environment, in order to operate safely and efficiently
property. QuantIC’s researchers are working with security company Aralia Systems Ltd
alongside people. However, current 2D cameras and machine vision techniques cannot
to investigate the feasibility of employing LED systems for covert automated video
determine the scene context with sufficient accuracy.
surveillance.
The QuantIC LiFi UWB is additionally used to create lighting patterns that enable the
appropriate camera to recover multispectral, 2D, 2.5D (surface texture) and 3D information.
This data is a starting point for vision systems based upon computational neuroscience that
seek to emulate the way humans perceive their surroundings.
The project combines LiFi UWB with photometric stereo reconstruction to facilitate a
Structured light technolgy has promising applications
complete 3D model of the environment around the AMR. In addition ceiling-mounted
across a number of industry sectors including:
luminares provide indoor positioning information for the AMR. These three functions
facilitate the design of low cost AMRs that can function safely alongside people. This is of
critical importance to many proposed robotic tasks, in particular ‘Smart Cities’, including
public and domestic healthcare, maintenance and safety.
Aralia systems Ltd, a UK SME, has been providing a unique set of intelligent surveillance
Robotics products to a wide customer-base.
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Space Based Technology
new space-based technology, using the Wee-g MEMS sensor technology to miniaturise
spacecraft attitude control, improving the capabilities of nanosatellite technology where the
QuantIC is advancing space based technologies through industrial
UK has a strong industrial position. QuantIC has been supported in developing the MEMS
projects with Clyde Space which include improving gravity sensing sensing technology by securing a 4-year CENSIS (Innovation Centre for Sensing and Imaging
and low light communications systems for satellites. Systems) EngD studentship for a joint industry project with Clyde Space.
S Clyde Space is also working with QuantIC researchers to develop a low light level
atellite technology is vital for a wide range of terrestrial applications, from
communications and positioning system that operates at the few-photon level, close to
communications and weather systems tracking to navigation and Earth observation.
the quantum limit. This technology will allow constellations of satellites to identify their
Furthermore, new technological advances show clear opportunities for distributed
own position relative to other units and to communicate with each other, all at ultra-low
swarms or constellations of small satellites that will provide new functionality using
power levels, and with form factors compatible with current CubeSat standards. QuantIC’s
innovative, cost-effective units in flexible arrangements.
LED emitter technology and single photon receivers crucially enable this performance. It
QuantIC is working with Glasgow based Clyde Space, a world-leading innovator and supplier also offers a high level of resilience against both DC and AC background noise. Transmitter
of CubeSats and small satellite systems. Researchers are creating a transformative and receiver are both conveniently interfaced with CMOS digital electronics. This work is
supported by a PRF Phase 2 investment.
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