Innovation centre CEO on sensing an opportunity

“It’s projects, projects, projects we want to see being done,” insists Ian Reid, chief executive of CENSIS, the innovation centre for sensor and imaging systems. Today, perhaps, is a key prelude to that as experts from across industry and academia gather in Edinburgh for the centre’s second annual technology summit.
 
The innovation centre – one of eight set up in 2013 thanks to an overall funding pot of £120m over five years from the Scottish Funding Council (SFC) – is intended to meet the needs of an industry contributing £2.5bn a year to the economy. Three technical themes – integrated systems asset management, image processing and the Internet of Things (IoT) – have been singled out for discussion today.
 
“We looked at attracting university speakers from the academic base and company speakers that had a real story to tell and a real challenge where they could lay down the gauntlet and say ‘look, this is what we’re doing, how can you help us improve this?’ says Reid. Featured are speakers from IBM’s newly-established IoT Business Unit as well as Spain-based internet of things, smart cities and M2M platform provider Libelium.
 
Indeed, it is the latter of the three themes – IoT – that continues to attract global attention. The concept is quite simple: it seeks to bring everyday objects – from home appliances to cars – to life through in-built sensors and web connections, triggering fresh innovation albeit concerns over data and its security as well.
 
“There is a lot of hype out there about the ‘Internet of Things’, connected sensors and all the rest of it, but underneath that and catching up very quickly with the hype curve is some real great potential applications for these technologies,” says Reid. “It’s all about having relatively lost cost, low power, interconnected – preferably wireless devices – that you can attach to various objects and that then creates an identity for the object in cyber space.”
 
CENSIS’ particular interest in IoT lies in using connected sensors to support improvements in manufacturing processes. “It allows the object to sense a bit about its environment and maybe sense the condition that the object is in – temperature, pressure, vibration, etc,” he says. “That added piece of information can be used in the production line for improving the production process [and therefore] improving the quality of the goods produced.”
 
Against this backdrop, CENSIS is preparing to launch a Connected Devices Development Centre (CDDC), a new facility within their Glasgow office to help small and medium-sized enterprises effectively fast-track the development of IoT products and services.
 
A demonstration area that will allow companies to present their products to potential investors as well as access to latest development tools and software designed to cut down the length of time it takes to go from concept to prototype are planned. The centre will open its doors a month today.
 
“There is a lot of kit already out there, so you can buy commercial off-the-shelf stuff to help you connect up sensors,” says Reid. “It’s relatively early days so there are a whole host of unanswered questions about standardisation and interoperability… and there is certainly a lot of information that the general industrial base still needs to assimilate.
 
“What we wanted to do was create a centre where academics, industrialists, small companies, large companies, the lone entrepreneur can come in and if they’ve got a new idea for a new sensor, if they’ve got a rough prototype, what they can do is see whether they can connect it up to the cloud, whether they can get it to operate seamlessly with commercial hardware.

"If somebody has got an idea of building a system with new sensors they can try it out, they can, if you like, very quickly use commercial building blocks to create something that will give them an idea of how something would perform in the real world, a prototype which they could then redesign into a smaller form at lower power, lower cost, etc.”
 
The new facility, of course, could be key to CENSIS’ own long-term prospects. The innovation centre commanded an initial investment of £10m from SFC, the money primarily going towards supporting research and development in the field of sensor and imaging systems. That funding will run out in two-and-a-half years time. “All the innovation centres right at their inception were challenged with finding a sustainability model beyond the five-year window that would rely less on the public purse,” Reid tells Holyrood.
 
“That doesn’t mean to say no public funding, but it would rely less on the public purse and would look to create a model out of industry engagement, academic engagement… [that] might compete for third party funding, for collaborative projects.

"So basically [the aim] is to work on a sustainability model – there is no secret about that, all the innovation centres were challenged to think that through and we’re about two and a half years into the five-year process. This is the year that we’re planning and doing the ground work on a sustainability model and at the moment we’re exploring a number of options.”
 
Over 170 companies are working directly in sensor system technologies in Scotland. CENSIS is now involved in 16 projects, including a collaboration with the Offshore Renewable Energy Catapult that could see a new type of sensor installed on the blades of subsea tidal turbines to monitor any potential collisions with marine life.     
 
“One of the things that we’ve learned is that the bandwith required and the returns in terms of GVA [Gross Value Added] impact of lots of smaller projects is a real uphill climb,” says Reid. “I think in the second half of the programme what you will see is we will do smaller projects and feasibility studies and phase ones and all that kind of good stuff, but I think what you’ll see is a bit more focus on building bigger projects with more impact and more partners and [that is] inevitably more complex.”
 
Discussions have taken place with potential partners that could form the basis of a consortia for Horizon 2020 bids, confirms Reid, whose career has included stints at GEC-Marconi and Pulse Engineering Inc, Rood Testhouse NV and QinetiQ. Reid claims “a tremendous amount of progress” has been made since CENSIS’ inception, though he insists the focus is now on generating “good quality projects”. Asked what further policy support would be welcome, he strikes a careful tone. 
 
”Athough we certainly have some big end users, in terms of the actual delivery of CENSIS’ systems solutions, there are a lot of SMEs and I think it’s a universal truth across all industries that have that sort of industry base that it’s a huge challenge to engage SMEs simply because they have limited bandwidth and they are very focused on the day,” he says. “Our initiative is about being industry-led but our funding pot is directed at universities because it’s SFC money.
 
“If there is one thing that I would really want to bang the drum about it’s making sure that the strategy of third party funding organisations – for example Scottish Enterprise, Highlands and Islands Enterprise, Innovate UK and Horizon 2020 – is aligned closely with the work of other innovation actors like ourselves where, although we’re industry-led, our funding can only go to universities.

"Therefore it’s really important to have those other funding bodies, strategies and policies lined up closely with the work that we’re doing. If there was one plea it would be to make sure we’re all joined up in the innovation space.”
 
Implicit in his plea, it seems, is an acknowledgement that there is room for improvement. “Now you’re tempting me into a indiscretion,” he laughs.