UK Govt Grant Application

NeoMatrix applied for UK Government Grant funding in 2020, in the 'Smart Grants' category.

https://apply-for-innovation-funding.service.gov.uk/competition/701/overview

While not successful, the application received some high praise by the government assessors. It also received many comments that showed a lack of understanding of the technology, which is perhaps understandable given it's highly complex, and not easily conveyed in a written application. Note that the Innovate UK Smart programme is highly competitive, and as advised, the round applied for saw particularly high volumes of applications.

The following comments were extracted from a lengthy review of the NeoMatrix UK grant application.
A copy of the application and assessors comments is available under NDA to interested parties.

Assessor feedback - Supportive Comments

Assessor 1

The proposal describes a novel data compression technique based upon probabilities. In short, taking lines (roads) to establish locations rather than point-to-point tracking using GPS. The implications of this geo-modelling is breathtaking, and indeed innovative application of quantum mechanics. A stark contrast to the Newtonian/Cartesian model deployed by GPS.

Assessor 1

The proposal's bold innovation requires a very agile setup as the implications and implementations of the design and planning require deep expertise and cooperation. As such, and rightly so, the team gathered for this work is diverse but united through the appreciation that the proposed innovation is bleeding edge. While the target market is road based transportation, the process is too early to involve 'road experts' as the innovation must not be hampered by legacy.

Assessor 1

The proposal is frankly honest upon the unknown consequences of a successful delivery within this competition. Rightly so. The impact of the theory upon existing digital cartography platforms, from WIFI and GPS based solutions through to high resolution satellites, would be immense. What the proposal notes is these Cartesian techniques have in common is limits, which can be seen in the lack of innovation geodata platforms suffer from. Thus, the team have an vector into a large market with no competition.

Assessor 1

The proposal notes the need for public funding as the innovation falls outside of both academia and commercialism. This is an interesting zone to develop from, and thus makes for a notable public funded venture to bring about a new turn in science.

Assessor 1

This proposal is quite brilliant, rather the proposal is not as good as the ideas presented. The foundational innovation described within is so starkly different from existing geo-location ideas, it deserves the term innovation. In this day and age of 'game-changing' hype, it is hard, for the modest of the authors, to stand out. As such, the team deserve to have public confidence - and funding, and this is an area for improvement. Unlike the ideas, methods and approach to engineering, which are stunning. The budget maybe high, but herein there is extreme value awaiting.

Assessor 2
The applicant has identified global issues which relate to the technological gap they aim to address and this is referenced and well evidenced. The technology gap is described.

Assessor 2
The team members have appropriate and impressive skills and experience.

Assessor 5
The applicant describes a very clear and well evidenced challenge around reducing traffic congestion and air pollution. Its case is well constructed and it points to the issues and challenges with GPS in meeting the need.

Assessor 5
The applicant describes a clear and compelling approach that addresses the challenges identified. They point to where they believe their technology will differ \`from and improve on competitor's solutions, and it appears highly innovative.

Assessor 5
The application lists an impressive team with a impressive commitment to diversity. The team has significant experience in technology development and commercialisation and appears highly likely to deliver this project.

Assessor 5
The applicant provides a clear description of the opportunities of road pricing to create more efficient road use and how their technology will facilitate this. The market size is not quantified because it is new - more consideration of precedents or relevant other markets could have been used to inform some estimation of market size.

Assessor 5
The application makes a string case for the impact for consumers and also the potential for environmental benefit. The proposal is also highly aligned to likely policy changes in coming years.

Assessor 5
The applicants have clearly thought through the headlines risks. As an innovative technology there are a lot of unknowns - however it is not clear where the proactive mitigation identified fit within the project plan.

Assessor 5
The applicants makes some case for the timeliness and necessity of UK funding, and it it is likely that a risky project at this stage of its development would fail to secure other investors. It is not clear whether the project would increase levels of R&D by the applicant over time.

Assessor feedback - Non-Supportive Comments

Assessor 1

The proposal explains the need of the proposed innovation is that the existing systems, such as GPS technology, are not fit for the granular level of tracking required for dynamic road pricing schemes. Through negation, the proposal implies the challenge is technical and in-turn the business need is digital transformation. Except, digital transformation is not a need, but a drive to efficiency. When efficiency is a need, the cost of innovation is contingency. As such, the opportunity is the removal of contingencies, which is the principle of change. This makes the need problematic.

NeoMatrix Response: GPS Provides more granularity than the proposed solution. Granularity is not the issue. Privacy is a major part of the need for a non-point based tracking system, Which GPS can't address as well.

Assessor 1

The proposal does not need to present a Gantt chart, nor proclaim agility, double diamonds or even system design. Herein is a team who are around the object they seek to create, building out something that cannot yet be defined. There is a goal, yet it is a destination, not an end. This is craft, not industrial innovation. This is the style of development that many dream of, but few can achieve.

Assessor 2

This project offers the opportunity to address a gap in both location based services and journey based pricing. Whilst the technological challenges are well described the actual barriers to adoption need significant amounts of further development.

Assessor 3

A range of transport related problems are well described. A need for road pricing is proposed with a suggested consequent need for alternatives to GPS to provide vehicle tracking. However road pricing based on vehicle tracking may not be generally accepted as the best solution and GPS is not generally considered unsuitable for vehicle tracking when required.

NeoMatrix Response: GPS Is good for general vehicle tracking, but wholly unsuitable for dynamic road pricing, and the UK Governments own report indicated that a major barrier was the technology to monitor vehicles needed to be improved.

Assessor 3

The approach seems valid for improving GPS accuracy although location accuracy would be low as an alternative to GPS and extremely low for trips on new routes.

NeoMatrix Response: Current testing reveals already high accuracy using NeoMatrix's non-GPS tracking technology, and operates regardless of and entirely independent of 'new' routes

Assessor 3

A range of positive impacts are outlined, based on the suggestion that the 'technology may provide position and route history visibility'. However a method for position visibility would require additional data in particular GPS data and position data may be unavailable for newly travelled routes.

NeoMatrix Response: As commented above!

Assessor 3

The approach seems valid for improving GPS accuracy although location accuracy would be low as an alternative to GPS and extremely low for trips on new routes. The project may benefit from considering further use cases where there is a need for route-related improvements to GPS accuracy rather than as a replacement for GPS.

NeoMatrix Response: As commented above!

Assessor 4

There is a sensible motivation for this project, but many governments have not identified a definitive move to road pricing at present and while dynamic road pricing is what is envisaged it still remain a large challenge to build infrastructure which will cope with such a system. Current solutions using GPS based devices with inertial augmentation do have limitations, but are improving all the time.

NeoMatrix Response: One key benefit of the technology is that almost no new infrastructure needs to be built.

Assessor 4

There is novelty in the approach proposed, but no discussion on freedom to operate and if there are competitor technologies beyond GPS or some limited predictive tools. The concept of using neural networks can only lead to "probable" outcomes which will lead to errors and also require users to accept such a determination of their charge. In addition, routes are complex and while constrained still have huge levels of variability due to a vast array of factors, even as simple as day or night driving.

Assessor 4

Little information is provided on state of art and academic research. There is also a technical challenge, which is not considered. Where is the data collected to be processed on the device collecting the data or remotely which will then incur large and complex data transfer.

NeoMatrix Response: NeoMatrix has already seen and solved the complex data transfer issue, with the NeoTag format. This is already working fully, and offers dramatic compression far beyond current technology, but with almost no processing overhead. GPS can't compete with this, as the assessor has correctly identified this as a problem if working with point based tracking data.

Assessor 4

A reasonable attempt at developing the risks is presented, but given the novel nature proposed for the development it is surprising that there is such a limited analysis of technical risks. In fact the over all technical aspects are not presented or any preparatory work to suggest the concepts has some merit, which increases the overall technical risk significantly.