Company · Helsby
An environmental and engineering consultancy might seem an odd name in quantum, but RSK wanted a better way to find mineshafts, sinkholes and buried pipes without digging. Its geosciences team led Gravity Pioneer, a £6m Quantum Technologies Pioneer Fund project announced in November 2018 that ran to December 2021, with the University of Birmingham as academic lead and Teledyne e2v, Fraunhofer UK and Magnetic Shields among the partners. The cold-atom gravity gradiometer that came out of the work detected a utility tunnel under a road on Birmingham's campus, reported in Nature in 2022 as the first such find outside a laboratory.
RSK, based in Helsby, is a company. It leads 1 UK project (Gravity Pioneer) and is a partner in 1 more.
Sources: University of Birmingham: Gravity power, industry leaders enter partnership to develop quantum gravity sensors · Gateway to Research: Pioneer Gravity · Laser Focus World: Quantum gravity gradient sensor detects outdoor tunnel
Gravity Pioneer
An RSK-led consortium that built and tested a cold-atom gravity sensor for surveying what lies underground.
Role: Lead
Funding: £6m
Themes: Sensing
QuSIT
A national research hub for quantum sensing, imaging and timing, led by the University of Birmingham.
Role: Partner
Funding: £22m
Themes: Sensing, Imaging, Timing and navigation
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