British companies developing quantum measurement and positioning systems have been selected to share £50 million in government-backed funding, with projects ranging from railway fault location to industrial gas monitoring and navigation equipment. The awards, announced on 13 October, are intended to help businesses move from early technical testing towards products that can be assessed for practical use.
The funding is being delivered through UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) under its Sensing and Positioning, Navigation and Timing competition. It forms part of a wider package that also includes £20 million for commercial quantum networking and an £8 million expansion of specialist apprenticeship training. Those are separate allocations and should not be presented as a single £50 million programme.
West Midlands company MoniRail is among the recipients, developing high-accuracy railway positioning and monitoring technology. The proposed system would help maintenance teams locate problems affecting tracks and signalling equipment, including locations where satellite navigation is unreliable. A fault alert becomes more useful when the equipment can associate it with a sufficiently precise section of railway for inspection.
Satellite navigation signals are often weakened or unavailable in tunnels and beneath substantial structures. Conventional inertial sensors can provide motion information without an external signal, but small measurement errors accumulate as position is calculated over time. Quantum inertial technologies are being investigated as a means of improving the precision and stability of the underlying measurements.
A railway positioning installation still needs a suitable model of the route and a way to associate measurements with the track network. The performance of any proposed quantum system will depend on sensor calibration, environmental conditions and its integration with other navigation information. Funding for development does not establish that MoniRail’s technology is qualified for operational signalling or in routine network service.
Other awards address measurement problems in energy and industrial infrastructure. Welsh company QLM Technology is developing camera-based equipment to see and quantify greenhouse gases at facilities operated by the energy, water and waste sectors. Locating gas releases can be difficult where assets cover large areas or where emissions vary with operating conditions.
Quantification also presents a separate task from detection. A sensor may indicate the presence of a gas, but estimating the amount released requires appropriate measurement techniques and information about the surrounding conditions. Wind, distance, background concentration and the behaviour of the source can influence the result, making field validation essential for equipment intended to support emissions reporting or maintenance decisions.
Oxford-based Quantum Fabrix is working on a new generation of satellite clocks for navigation, defence and communications infrastructure. Timing is critical to satellite positioning because the receiver estimates its location from the travel times of signals transmitted by different satellites. Errors in those reference times can translate into errors in the calculated position.
Stable frequency and time references are also needed in communications networks, where equipment must coordinate the transmission and reception of information. The specifications required for a particular clock depend on the intended system and the environment in which it operates; a laboratory demonstration alone does not establish suitability for orbital service or other demanding installations.
ColdQuanta UK, also based in Oxfordshire, has been selected to develop a compact mobile system for locating radio signals accurately. The government identifies potential applications in defence, emergency response and the protection of critical infrastructure, including airports. These are intended uses of the developing system rather than reported commercial deployments.
The programme extends into medical instrumentation. Siloton is developing a portable eye scanner intended to bring specialist diagnostics closer to patients, while Nottingham-based Cerca Magnetics is working towards clinical use of wearable brain scanning equipment. Their inclusion reflects the precision measurement capabilities of quantum technologies, although the operating requirements and approval pathways differ from industrial sensors.
Turning any of these systems into a product requires repeatable manufacturing as well as scientific performance. Optical assemblies, sensing elements, control electronics and mechanical packages must be built consistently. Calibration procedures also have to establish that an instrument’s measurements remain within the required tolerances after transport, servicing and use in the intended environment.
Specialist components form another potential constraint. UKRI has separately allocated £20 million through its Enabling Commercial Quantum Networking competition to strengthen domestic capabilities in areas such as lasers and photonic chips. Sheffield company Aegiq is among the businesses identified for support. The networking programme addresses communications technology and its supply chain, not the same sensing projects funded under the £50 million competition.
Photonic devices can require tightly controlled material processing, dimensional accuracy and packaging. Small changes to a device or optical interface may affect the signals it produces or transmits, so manufacturing methods and inspection have to be developed alongside the component design. Suppliers also need ways to reproduce the required characteristics across multiple production batches.
Technician training is being addressed through a separate £8 million expansion of UKRI’s QuEST Apprentices Programme. The scheme aims to equip 150 engineering apprentices with quantum-related capabilities by 2030, supporting the businesses that will assemble, test and maintain specialist equipment. This is a future training target, not the number of apprentices already qualified.
The work ranges from vacuum and optical equipment to electronics, thermal management and precision assembly, depending on the technology involved. Manufacturers also need personnel able to diagnose faults and maintain installed instruments, rather than only researchers capable of demonstrating a new sensing principle. Skills development therefore accompanies component manufacture and application testing in the wider funding package.
The awards fall within a previously announced UK ambition to become a leading centre for quantum sensing by 2030, backed by a wider investment commitment of up to £2 billion. That strategic figure is not additional money awarded to the October projects and should not be combined with them as though all funds are newly committed expenditure.
Industrial adoption will depend on performance against existing technologies under operating conditions. Measurement accuracy, reliability, size, maintenance requirements and cost will determine whether customers can justify replacing or augmenting established equipment. The funded companies now face the engineering and qualification work needed to establish those characteristics, with commercial use and sustained operating performance still to be demonstrated.
