Stephen Crampton Email & Phone Number

London Area, United Kingdom

Surveying technologies and futures with a view to finding co-founders and building the company.

Swarm Systems developed sub-250g (Nano) Unmanned Air Systems (UAS) for military and security. The Owl 4 UAS was readied in 2018. The key use is as flying binoculars for seeing over the hill or around the corner. Our first success was in winning 'Most Innovative Idea' and £300,000 at the MOD Grand Challenge in 2008. Swarm Systems won more than 15 research contracts. We partnered with universities and technology companies in the autonomous systems space.

Trio Motion Technology are developers and manufacturers of programmable motion control systems for specialist machinery. Trio controllers can handle many tens of axes of movement in a fast-moving machine. Leading OEM machine builders throughout the world and in many industries are the key customers. Trio's products are manufactured in Europe and Asia. Distribution worldwide is led from three main offices in UK, US and China. Trio customises their technology to provide new products for leading control system manufacturers. Trio is one of the top three suppliers in many territories.

'At Surreal Vision we are bringing super­human perception to robots and people. We are a passionate team of computer vision scientists tackling the most ambitious perception problems for the next wave of spatially­ aware machines.'The Surreal Vision computer vision research team has already pioneered new approaches to 3D scene reconstruction. I was involved from the start due to my business background and my understanding of computer vision from my time with 3D Scanners and Swarm Systems. Surreal Vision was acquired by Oculus Research, Seattle - part of Meta (Facebook). The team is working on a world-changing mission: https://www.oculus.com/blog/announcing-the-acquisition-of-surreal-vision/

3D Scanners pioneered laser stripe scanning on articulated measuring arms. Sales were made to nearly every automotive and aerospace company worldwide, and it became a standard product. Amongst numerous technical and business awards, 3D Scanners was the first UK recipient of the EU IT Grand Prize of 200,000 Euro in 1996, presented by the President of the EU. In 2006, 3D Scanners built the world's most accurate robot for measuring: RoboCMM. 3D Scanners was a virtual company. A global distribution network spanning 30 countries was rapidly established in the mid-1990s. Two software teams were established in Bulgaria. 3D Scanners was sold to Nikon Metrology in 2006.

Cooperation with the University of Surrey led to the formation of Avatar-Me in 1998. An Avatar Booth technology was developed for automatically creating photo-realistic avatars of people. A successful £0.8m installation in the Millennium Dome for BT plc resulted in 300,000 people having their avatars made during 2000. The niche market of providing a sponsored attraction at large events was at that time too small to be interesting and the Company was wound up. Avatars of people have had several renaissances since then, but no team has yet added large value in this space.

RD Projects was a spin-out from Imperial College. It developed industrial robots and CNC machine tool controllers. Most of my work was leading the CNC machine tool controller project team from prototype to a product that was manufactured and installed throughout the UK. RD Projects funded my MBA at INSEAD.

Student Apprentice. Training and work experience in three locations: Barrow (ships, submarines, howitzers) for apprentice training in 20 departments from foundry through assembly to design and a special project on impact energy absorption for nuclear flasks. At Rheinmetall in Dusseldorf (tanks) in several production depts for 10 weeks, interacting in German. At Rolls Royce and Associates in Derby (SMR nuclear reactors for submarines) working on flow modelling inside the PWR2 reactor core.

Mba

Bsc (Eng), Mechanical Engineering, Final Year Thesis Prize

Activities and Societies: Rowing, Motor Club, Windsurfing