Challenge : There’s a Design Brief – and then there’s an Impossible Design Brief. Or so it seems. We were asked to take on a highly constrained set of requirements to produce a specific illumination solution. We’re not even going to mention the suck-your-breath-in time and budget constraints. The specification demanded a geometry which was already defined, a limited space requiring a design around a cylindrical symmetry of existing arc lamps and extremely specific colour requirements, not to mention the need for stability, no moving parts (other than forced air cooling) and the whole thing to be field-replaceable.

Approach : After using some of the limited time to scratch our heads, we set to work by looking at the various components – mechanical, optical, electrical, thermal, communications, and interfaces. We then began a process of rapid iterative designs, interspersed with a bit more head scratching, which quickly delivered a winning prototype.

The end result : We knew we had to apply a creative approach to product design in this case since the Market Requirement Specification gave parameter magnitudes that were extremely large. We adopted a Risk Management design approach which highlighted key risks and steered our course. We innovated with quick and inexpensive experiments revealing invaluable information and preventing any waste-of-time designs. The final design met the physical mechanical requirements, was compatible, provided the correct optical flux and spectrum with the correct temporal behaviour and was ready for manufacture. A key strength was its relative simplicity, requiring only readily-available off-the-shelf components.

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QLS represents the successful culmination of research by the University of Bristol who have demonstrated imaging and sensing ‘beyond the shot noise limit’ using quantum technology.

Supported by QuantIC and the Quantum Technology Enterprise Centre, Bristol’s research opens a paradigm shift, providing a way to move beyond classical limitations of metrology which until now have been an inevitable part of all imaging and sensing.

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UDA recently completed a detailed study into the commercial feasibility for a new generation MEG device. Working with the world class research team at the University of Nottingham, Sir Peter Mansfield Imaging Centre, led by Dr Matthew Brookes, we provided an in-depth market analysis with recommendations and a roadmap to take the technology to market. The project was funded by Innovate UK and led by UDA. MEG is a non-invasive brain imaging system which reads magnetic fields produced from the activity of neurons in the brain. Technological breakthroughs by the team in Nottingham promise a new generation system which will be important for research into Mental Health, brain disorders, understanding neurodegenerative diseases, and paediatric epilepsy. Working on this project added significantly to our technical know-how in magnetic imaging and shielding, enhancing our portfolio of medical imaging system expertise.

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Is sub-shot noise sensing and imaging a commercial prospect? Such was the fundamental question as addressed in this Quantum Technology project.

Collaborating with teams at University of Bristol including Dr Mateusz Piekarek, Dr Jonathan Matthews, and colleagues, as well as Dr Andy Collins of QTEC, on an Innovate UK funded project, UDA investigated the commercial possibilities for future applications for a sub-shot- noise photon pair light source (SSNPPS) which had been developed to prototype level by the Bristol team.

Quantum technology

The end result is a substantial and detailed report, representing the culmination of the year long project which responds to the call, articulated within Quantum Technologies programme (supported by the Blackett Review, The Quantum Age: technological opportunities), and through the Quantum Hub, QuantIC, to encourage organisations to identify routes for translation of Quantum Technologies from research to real world adoption.

The outcomes are comprehensive, based on a series of in-depth interviews, technical investigations, simulations, analyses, and market research and can be broadly summarised as delivering:

• identifying further detector development as a key and necessary element of the value proposition for a future positioning of SSNPPS
• a more thorough understanding of the need to ‘translate’ the language of physics, and more specifically that of quantum optics and information theory, to a language which is more easily communicated to industry in order to accurately identify true end user needs
• a future direction for further development of academic research
• a view of the most appropriate markets for future commercial exploitation of this technology, and some idea of the sizing and models of these markets

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New materials and composites require new practical methods for inspection and quality processes.

Current off-the-shelf technology cannot accurately detect failures in many applications from inspection of graphite moderator stacks to cracks in wind turbine blades. With increasing global trends toward automation, robotics, remote management of operations and increased demand for digitalisation, we were highly motivated to join the European MITOS (Magnetic Induction Tomography with Optical Sensors) project to explore the possibilities of implementing quantum sensor technology in inspection systems*.

Quantum technology

The scientific foundation for the project was based on the research performed by the team at UCL on radio-frequency atomic magnetometers, which demonstrated that quantum sensors could provide orders of magnitude greater performance than current systems.

MITOS project

The MITOS project extended the concept to investigate the commercial development prospects for a robotic inspection system for imaging applications such as inspection under cladding, paint, debris and laminate materials.

Outcomes

The project confirmed that a system based on the use of atomic magnetometers to deliver a form of electromagnetic induction imaging would be capable of overcoming many of the limitations in current systems**.

Benefits

We demonstrated that this technology would be capable of development into a new inspection system which would offer a series of key advantages. The technology does not require contact with the object being inspected. It can be miniaturised. It can be readily deployed in automated/robotic systems. It can be deployed in underwater scenarios.

An inspection system based on radio-frequency atomic magnetometer technology would be an appropriate solution for many applications which require imaging through materials, for example in the evaluation of steel structures through layers of marine life.

* Project consortium: Unitive Design, the Department of Physics and Astronomy at UCL, the Istituto Nazionale di Ottica, Marwan Technology and Valis Engineering

** A demonstration of the radio-frequency atomic magnetometer with sub-Doppler laser cooled rubidium-87 in a simple and compact design, was demonstrated at UCL and shown to work to a sensitivity of 330 pT/√Hz in an unshielded environment, matching or surpassing previously reported cold atom designs.

The post MITOS – New Technologies for NDT/NDE appeared first on Unitive Design.

Overview

The PoC-BoSens project was a European consortium consisting of a multidisciplinary, collaborative team of biochemists, packaging and assembly experts, photonic and micro-fluidic chips designers, along with optical readout specialists, focused on early stage point of care diagnostics. It was set up to explore the feasibility of using bottle mode resonators which exhibit whispering-gallery-like optical modes for bio-sensing and specifically targeted at disease-relevant biomolecules.  Such molecules are key in the early diagnosis of pathologies in scenarios where there is a risk of the rapid onset of disease or where disease can become chronic in the time take to perform conventional diagnostic techniques. Antibiotic-resistant tuburculosis is one such disease target example.

Unitive Design were tasked with capturing all of the device requirements and top-level specifications, maintaining a system-level coherent control and capturing technical and sub-system interface risks to ensure that the device could perform to specification as a complete, complex system.

Project goals

The project had four primary goals:

• Prove that ELISA biochemical assays can be translated to the point of care device
• Produce an ultra-sensitive readout system using the high Q-factor of BMRs
• Develop a portable readout system which conforms to the healthcare economics
• Develop a robust, affordable assay cartridge prototype

An ambitious project with a high degree of knowledge-transfer between the team members, three (overlapping) working groups: Bio-recognition, Chip Integration, Readout and an over-riding integration module to bring the subsystems into a cohesive whole.

Project Team

The project team comprised:

• Fraunhofer Centre for Microelectronics and Packaging (IZM – Berlin, DE) – lead partner
• BBI Solutions (Freiburg, DE)
• Scienion (Berlin, DE)
• MDX devices (Deißlingen, DE)
• IfU Diagnostic Systems (Chemnitz, DE)
• Austrian Institute of Technology (AIT – Vienna, A)
• Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna (SSSA – Pisa, I)
• SYEL Industrial Automation & Electronics Systems (Pisa, I)
• Unitive Design & Analysis Ltd (London, GB)

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