UWE Bristol Announces New Knowledge Transfer Partnership with Metrea

UWE Bristol and Metrea are excited to announce that they have been successful in securing funding from Innovate UK to form a new 24-month Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP).  

Metrea Mission Data (MMD), a business unit within Metrea, are experts at capturing and missionising data that can be exploited at the speed of relevance to deliver information and decision advantage from the strategic to tactical level. A combination of extensive operational experience and expertise in ISR operations, Tactical Data Links, Data Analytics and Cyber Security enables them to deliver a full stack of services, delivering high-impact outcomes for our customers and partners. 

Owen Varley, MMD’s Managing Director, said “We are delighted to have secured KTP funding which will not only support UWE with their research & development, but also provide us with academic expertise and resources to develop our image processing techniques enabling us to enhance our products further.””.  

“This project comprises an exciting opportunity for a new research direction within the UWE Centre for Machine Vision (CMV), relating to the analysis of images and video footage of Resident Space Objects (RSOs) in Low Earth Orbit.  Metrea’s work will research and test the capabilities of the latest machine vision and AI techniques for processing observations of RSOs. Deep learning analysis of these distant objects will aim to enable identification, size estimation, and other characteristics.” – Lyndon Smith 

Knowledge Transfer Partnerships (KTPs) intend to integrate academic research into companies, to promote innovation and growth. Engaging in a KTP offers the academic institution (UWE) a foundation for broader research involvement as well as opportunities for research impact and potential future collaborations within the industry. 

The project will be supervised by UWE Bristol academics Lyndon Smith, Mark Hansen and Mel Smith. Lyndon Smith is a Professor in Computer Simulation and Machine Vision, Mark Hansen is a Professor in the Centre for Machine Vision and Mel Smith is a Professor of Machine Vision and the Director of the Centre for Machine Vision.