01 Jun 2004
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Car mounted collision avoidance
The ATC is a powerhouse of technology innovation for the company.
In meeting the needs of BAE SYSTEMS, the ATC routinely taps into emerging science and technology topics across the broadest possible range.
Along the way, many original ideas and prospects for new technology are uncovered, some of which could solve important problems outside the defence market.
In conjunction with external partners, BAE SYSTEMS Ventures offers a bridge between the defence focused Business and the commercial world outside. If you are working on a technology that could solve an important problem outside defence, make sure the Ventures team is aware by submitting it at the Ventures intranet site. As an extra enticement to budding entrepreneurs, Ventures offers a personal share of revenues of up to £ 0.5 million from successful commercialisation.
Following recent market successes, including a deal netting over $0.5 million in profit, Ventures is changing the way it works to become more market focused. The previous emphasis on the external promotion of individual technologies will be replaced with a drive to understand technology needs in a few fast-growing markets. Ventures will seek to match the Company’s capabilities and technologies with these needs with a view to creating sustainable businesses.
To this end, Ventures is strengthening its partnership with external organisations to gain access to a venture capital funding and market expertise. In line with the partnered business model, Ventures has restructured its internal team. Bob Flint heads up the new team of three, supported by Ron Smith and James Carroll.
Ventures see the ATC as an extremely rich source of disruptive technology. As a flavour of the technologies currently under consideration, here are a few examples taken from the Ventures case file:
Steered radar beams for cars
Future cars fitted with steered Radar beams could 'look around' and find the position of potential obstacles, identify and locate other vehicles and roadside furniture and even measure motorway speeds.
The ATC has developed an electronically operated deflector for microwave radar that can be used to point beams in any direction. The system works by shining the radar through a block of ferrite material which has electromagnetic coils wrapped around each side. As current is varied in the coils, the changing magnetic field in the block steers the radar.
ATC scientist Bal Kumar, who invented the device, has been working with the Ventures team to explore commercialisation. His role in the process was liaison with potential customers and supply of technical information. Working with Ventures in this way has gained Bal exposure to a wide potential customer base in the commercial field.
An exact value has not yet been put on this technology but early indications are that the potential is huge.
Component potting process.
A detailed search by Ventures of the BAE SYSTEMS patent portfolio revealed a component encapsulation process developed by ATC scientists originally as a means of miniaturising pieces of military hardware subject to very high voltages (1/2 million volts).
The silicon rubber potting process increases insulation by as much as 50% for high voltage components which means that equipment can be made smaller or performance can be significantly improved for a given design.
The ATC team, led by Paul Garner have developed a great deal of expertise in using different insulating materials. It is their job to anticipate technologies that will be needed to meet the demands of electrical systems as they become more miniaturised.
Ventures commissioned an initial markets review which produced a number of potential commercial exploitation routes. The next phase is to test the validity of these markets using a leading technical consultant partner.
ORACLE
Human vision model
The ORACLE human vision model was developed by a team of ATC experts led by Kevin Cooke for predicting the response of the Human vision system in such tasks as military target identification and cockpit display evaluation.
The history of the technology can be traced back to the 1970s and dozens of licenses have been granted to BAE SYSTEMS customers and partners, including Rover who has used ORACLE during the development of in-car information displays.
Ventures initial market survey showed that ORACLE fits with a trend to use analytical tools for visual analysis in product design across a broad spectrum of industry. This ranges from aerospace and automotive companies to the design of consumer electronics such as the displays on mobile phones.
A leading European software vendor has shown interest in the technology and further markets are being assessed as commercial licence routes for the ORACLE software.
