The Maltese researcher who led the University of Malta to obtain its first international patent has berated the Maltese educational system for stifling creativity in students and creating a nation of conformists.
Malta’s ability to flourish will depend on our ability to distinguish ourselves from the rest
Marc Anthony Azzopardi invented a method for synchronising high-speed cameras with exceptional accuracy. The method can be used for taking simultaneous digital snap-shots of an object, or event, from several different angles with a synchronisation error of less than a tenth of billionth of a second. This research was carried out as part of a €16.44 million FP6 EU-funded project consortium called “Sensation”.
“Investment in research and innovation is a chicken and egg dilemma,” explained Mr Azzopardi to i-Tech.
“Producing the researchers requires a national perception of opportunity in research, but very often, it is the researchers who create avenues for more R&I. Cracking this first problem proved to be slow and difficult in Malta and our educational system had something to do with it. In Malta our competitive nature drives us forward. So we like to read about the achievements of the few, but we often forget that these are the ones who have broken free from a system that tends to stifle the creative spirit in most students.
“You do not want a nation of conformists to do R&I. Innovation is all about thinking outside the box after having had a broad visceral experience of the physical and life sciences, and this was not something I learnt in school. My bedroom/washroom turned laboratory was where I learnt most of what I know. The classroom merely formalised and explained my experiences, and these were also my greatest source of motivation as a student. Now as lecturer in engineering, I continue to observe a similar pattern in my students. The ones with a flair for innovation are those who have departed from the national curriculum and took their education into their own hands because the educational system does not cater for those who wish to do better than average.
“Then there are the inescapable realities faced by a small country with limited resources, poor equipage and patchy domestic expertise. When I started, research meant solitary work in a mostly empty laboratory. I had to self-educate in new subjects and invent my own tools. Isolation does not help the creative mind. It slows you down. You need others to challenge your thinking and cross-fertilize your ideas,” said Mr Azzopardi.
A research engineer by profession, Mr Azzopardi lectures in electronics at the University of Malta and is currently reading for a Ph.D in autonomous air traffic management at Cranfield University in the UK. His main areas of research have included microelectronics, biomedical electronics, systems design and active safety systems for the automotive and aerospace sectors. Multivision technology, as the high-speed camera system is called, was invented and developed into a working prototype at the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Malta as a by product of Mr Azzopardi’s research and development activity in automotive electronic systems. Prof. Joseph Micallef and Dr Ivan Grech secured the university’s share of the funding. The director of Corporate Research Knowledge Transfer at university, Dr Anton Bartolo, supported the patenting and commercialisation process.
The patent was registered with the World Intellectual Property Organisation and covers over 30 industrialised countries.
The technology involves the use of two (stereovision) or more cameras working in tandem to capture objects or events from multiple angles. This can be important to create 3D representations of these objects or events. Fast events require the cameras to be synchronised in order to capture the same instant accurately and the closer they need to be synchronised, the less obvious the solution becomes. The technique developed reliably guarantees synchronisation to within a few tenths of a millionth of one millionth of a second using purely electronic means of relative simplicity. Previously, the only methods of comparable performance involved beam splitters and complex optics.
The method involved creating cameras using specific kinds of matched image sensors which when operated under a specific set of controlled conditions result in highly reliable synchronous image capture. The images from all cameras are combined at source and can then be transferred as a composite image to a computer via a single standard cable with no loss in synchronisation and very little delay.
“Securing a patent is just the first step in the long and arduous path to profitable commercialisation,” warned Mr Azzopardi. “Contacting potential clients and interested licensees is what we are working on at the moment and it is looking good. If all goes well and we manage to secure new contracts based on the patent, the university may choose to spin off the activity into a dedicated company.”
In the meantime he has moved on to other application areas of electronics, mostly related to transport and autonomous vehicles, including unmanned aircraft.
Asked about which areas of research and development could Malta give a valid contribution, Mr Azzopardi suggests Malta should have it own inventions.
“The next step in our growth is nurturing our ability to develop products and services based on local innovation. We need to shift more of our engineering focus from running the production lines of others and more into developing our own inventions and products and hence: technology enterprise.
“Malta’s ability to flourish will depend on our ability to distinguish ourselves from the rest. We have to take the game of national economics to an area where we can win. We will never be able to beat the Far Eastern manufacturing muscle on quantity. We can only do it on quality and the technology sector is ideal for us to play this game. Here, patents take a central role. There is, for example, great value in many niche manufacturing sectors where the competitive edge depends more on the intellectual property, flexibility and skills of the employees.
“The economy of continental Europe is largely of this kind and we are already doing it in electronics and ICT. I see further good opportunities in the production of scientific/medical instrumentation as well as subsystems for the aerospace and automotive markets,” concluded the inventor behind the University of Malta’s first international patent.