Idris works on quantum magnetometers and timing systems that can survive a van journey. He is unsentimental about Technology Readiness Levels and sentimental about a clean beat note.
Industry comes to him when GPS is being difficult and someone has suggested 'just use quantum' as if that were a purchase order.
His group's distinguishing habit is that it takes instruments outside. A magnetometer that performs beautifully on an optical bench in a basement is a physics result; the same instrument in an aircraft hangar, surrounded by reinforced concrete, buried services and a forklift, is an engineering problem with a completely different answer. He is interested almost exclusively in the second case.
He is candid about where the field is: the devices are genuinely remarkable, and the packaging, power budgets and supply chains are not yet. He would rather scope a modest project that answers whether a technique can work at a given site than a large one that assumes it will.
Selected projects
Named work, with a sentence of context each.
Hangar magnetic survey methodology
Established a repeatable survey method for characterising the magnetic environment of large industrial buildings, and the rather deflating finding that in most of them the building dominates the signal entirely.
Transportable timing reference
Built and road-tested a timing package that holds specification after a four-hour journey, including the vibration isolation redesign that the first version made necessary.
Sensor fusion for degraded navigation
Combined quantum and conventional inertial measurements to sustain navigation through extended satellite outage, with uncertainty reported honestly rather than optimistically.
Working with Okonkwo
He prefers to begin with a site visit rather than a specification. Half a day walking a hangar, quayside or tunnel usually establishes whether a measurement is possible at all, which is cheaper than finding out during a funded campaign.
Measurement claims that leave his group are stated with an uncertainty budget and, where the number matters commercially, referred to the National Physical Laboratory for traceability. He regards this as a courtesy to whoever has to defend the figure later.
Looking for
Field trials with a question attached, and a site that can be visited.
Probably not for
Programmes that need a quantum device to be at readiness level seven by the end of the financial year.
Credits and contributions
- Co-developer of a field survey protocol now used by two industrial partners
- Technical adviser on a national quantum technologies programme
- Named on three patents covering sensor packaging and drift compensation