Corporate Technology - Rolf Hellinger

Roke Manor Research
Roke Manor Research Ltd., an R&D center founded over 50 years
ago, has belonged to Siemens since 1990. The center’s approximately
470 employees are leaders in communications technology
and network and sensor systems. The researchers’ innovations
are extremely varied, ranging from true-to-life simulations of
TV studios, to RFID chips for the maintenance of trains, new
solutions for computer and magnetic resonance tomographs,
and optimized wind turbines.
Research in the Best
British Tradition
In the course of its history, which goes back
more than 50 years, the Roke R&D center located
in Romsey in southern England has acquired
a broad range of knowledge in the fields of communication,
sensor technology, and software for
corporate applications. So it’s no surprise that
the center offers a huge spectrum of innovative
services for developing commercial solutions and
systems. In recent years, Roke’s participation in
major projects of this kind has grown by leaps
and bounds, in large part because its researchers
are able to deliver innovations for every phase of
a product’s life cycle, from testing of the initial
concept to market launch.
Intelligent vision systems play a large role
in a major project that Roke helped implement
within a team led by Siemens Traffic for
Transport for London (TfL), the integrated
body responsible for the Capital's transport
system. To cut traffic levels and congestion
30 Corporate Technology
in central London, TfL introduced the central
London Congestion Charge in February
2003. A standard £8 daily charge applies to
vehicles driving within the Congestion
Charging zone, Monday to Friday 07:00am
to 6.00pm. Drivers who have not paid the
charge by midnight on the next charging
day after they travel in the zone are liable to
be issued a Penalty Charge Notice of £120,
which is reduced to £60 if paid within 14
days. The Congestion Charge is one of the
largest schemes of its type in the world. Vehicle
registration numbers are observed by
1,360 cameras at 338 sites, located both on
the boundary and within the zone. Almost
1.5 million images are captured and
processed every charging day. Roke's task in
this project was to develop an enterprise
scale, a high availability data management
system for handling this data.
Two other successful examples of the
British research company's activities are
from the medical sector. Engineers from
Roke have developed a system that enables
computer tomographs (CT) to communicate
their data significantly faster than in the
past. The values measured in the rotating
part of the machine are transmitted by contactless
means from a transmitter in the rotating
part to a stationary receiver on the fixed
part. The next generation of CT scanners,
which are to be equipped with this system,
attain a data transfer rates of 8.5 gigabits per
second. By comparison, today’s machines
achieve a transfer rate of five gigabits per
second. The Roke innovation thus allows
larger volumes of data to be transferred in
the same time, allowing the generation of
sectional views with higher resolution and
ultimately resulting in better data quality.