HRL begins Phase 1 of the Acoustic Fence project - a combined active/passive noise barrier
As part of the MoD contract Final Report HRL also presented a software microwave phased-array simulator able to analyse amongst many other parameters, in a detailed manner, necessary phase-switch timing, and beam shapes during satellite tracking
HRL delivers to MOD/DSTL a novel prototype X-band antenna, and a full-scale mechatronic linear stepper-actuator, together with beam-forming and steering performance data.
Covid intervened and affected personnel connected to the project ... HRL continued development throughout, introducing a novel hexagonal waveguide phase-shifter, and miniature etched stainless-steel actuator components
Wholly owned subsidiary company
Hooley RF joins Seraphim Space Camp Mission 4, to promote our high-performance mechatronic LEO-Satellite tracking-antenna project
HRL joins the DIT / GBIP Space Mission to Silicon Valley and LA, to promote its SMA-actuated phased-array antenna technology for LEO satellite broadband ground terminals.
HRL delivered contract Final Report together with prototype Ku-band phased-array antenna, and a demonstration-version mechatronic long-throw linear-actuator to MoD/DSTL, together with microwave test-chamber measurements of antenna beam-forming and steering performance
HRL's SMA-actuated phase-shifters have very low-loss and very high transmit efficiency, and can be grouped into a conformable or flat-panel array to make a low-cost (<<$1000) hi-performance LEO satellite ground-terminal antenna for world-wide end-user broadband service.
Building further on their SMA technology, 1...Ltd now renamed as Cambridge Mechatronics, launched the world's thinnest OIS actuator for cellphone cameras, first released in the FoxConn M530 smartphone
Hooley founded Hooley Research Ltd (HRL) in 2012, to continue the cognitive processing and related work of Nallen Ltd, and subsequently to also explore new SMA actuator technologies and applications.
In 2012 1...Ltd sold the previously licensed Digital Sound Projector patents to Yamaha, who have by now manufactured more than $2Bn of this 1...Ltd DSoP technology
1...Ltd launched its first Shape Memory Alloy autofocus unit that went into a million Panasonic cellphones
In 2006 Hooley developed a generalised 2D multithreaded acoustic FEA code to analyse and design new types of high-efficiency acoustic transducers and array systems.
The Institute of Electrical Engineers (now the IET) awarded Hooley their Achievement Medal, which is "awarded to individuals who have made major and distinguished contributions in the various sectors of science, engineering and technology".
After relinquishing his full-time positions at 1...Ltd Hooley founded Nallen Ltd to pursue full-time his long-term research into image processing, cognitive computing, language understanding and robotics , whilst still acting as a consultant to 1...Ltd
Ray Dolby, who had visited 1...Ltd's CES stand in Las Vegas in 2002, was now interested in adapting the DSoP technology for movie theatres, and 1...Ltd began a joint development with Dolby Labs in 2005
In 2005 we also developed the first acoustic 3D phased-array PA loudspeaker for a professional audio client. This cylindrical array can direct up to 8 independent beams around 360deg horizontally and +/-70deg vertically, and has a continuous power rating of over 1KW.
The phased array simulator used to model all the 1...Ltd Digital Sound Projectors was enhanced to allow arbitrary / irregular arrays including this "squiral" array (for square-spiral) surrounding a TV screen
1...Ltd's first commercial cellphone-camera product was an Autofocus device in 2004, using a Helimorph to move the lens axially. A mass production line was built in China in conjunction with Flextronics, for Sony-Ericsson.
After developing a chipset for the DSoP, 1...Ltd licensed the technology to Yamaha who then launched their first DSoP product, the YSP-1, in Tokyo, Nov 2004 selling at less than $4000
(e.g. Yamaha
Cambridge Evening News Business Excellence Awards chose Hooley as Businessman Of The Year in 2003, against stiff competition including Prof. (now Sir) Richard Friend, Alan Barrel & Andy Richards.
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Following the fantastic press after the 2002 CES launch and the Pioneer PDSP-1 launch, T3 Magazine awarded 1...Ltd Innovation of the Year
1...Ltd publicly launched its revolutionary Digital Sound Projector at CES Las Vegas in January 2002. Capable of steering and focussing 8 independent audio beams, the DSoP could produce full 5.1 channel surround sound without any additional boxes or wires.
Hooley's company 1...Ltd received a Design Council Millenium Products Award in 2000 for its Digital Loudspeaker Technology
Hooley & Pearce filed the first Helimorph actuator patent in 1999 - the WHERM as it was initially called, is a very high displacement piezoelectric actuator with superhelix geometry. A 4mm high Helimorph actuator can move +/-6mm!
The Manufacturing Industry Achievement Award was presented to 1...Ltd in 1999 for "Design Product of the Year" for its Digital Sound Projector product.
The Audio Engineering Society (AES) honoured Hooley's company 1...Ltd in 1999 with an award for "Breakthroughs in Loudspeaker Technology", relating to the Digital Sound Projector, an outcome of the early Digital Loudspeaker programme.
in 1998 the Cambridge Evening News Business Excellence Awards announced 1...Ltd as Small Business of The Year
With initial funding in place from the SMART Award, Hooley founded a new company, 1...Ltd to house the development, whose name reflected the core technology (unary arithmetic) of his original digital loudspeaker concept.
Hooley's Digital Loudspeaker concept won a DTI SMART Award in 1995, which kicked off funding for this new technology development.
In 1995 Hooley designed, built and patented the world's first completely Digital Loudspeaker, based on unary-code and acoustic digital to analogue conversion
Back in England, as Technical Director of AI Cambridge Ltd, Hooley oversaw the development of a picogram-sensitive SEMTEX plastic explosive detector
In his role as astrophysicist Hooley designed the Cottesloe Sundial in 1987 which won equal first prize at the World Sundial Triennium, Italy in 1993. Sited on the cliffs overlooking the Indian Ocean, north of Freemantle. this is one of the largest sundials in the southern hemisphere and due to its unique design, the most accurate in the world, throughout the year.
After leaving Insearch Ltd Hooley founded his first Australian company CCA Pty Ltd, which developed an extremely fast free-text database, as well as a multiuser business database. CCA provided computing consultancy services to companies in Sydney, including designing and installing a large networked computer-laboratory for UTS/Insearch Ltd (now UTS College).
As managing Director of UTS Insearch Ltd (now renamed UTS College) in 1991 Hooley oversaw the creation and opening of the Insearch Business and Computing School in Sydney, Australia, and the take-over of The Prince Centre for UTS.
More architectural work - CBTDL designed and built a staircase in Perth WA fashioned after a spider's web, made from West Australian timber.
In 1987 CBTDL won a contract from a West Australian client to fast-track (in 6 months) a clean-room-designed Acorn Computer-compatible BASIC Interpreter .
The architectural interest re-emerged with CBTDL's first construction project, this exotic garden shed which had a hyperbolic paraboloidal roof, a curved staircase onto the roof, and a tower!
After leaving Eicon in late 1985, Hooley set up a new consultancy company Cambridge Building Technology Design Ltd. The first significant contract won was from the West Australian Institute of Technology, WAIT, in Perth WA.
In 1985 Eicon Research's DisCache won the National Computing Centre's Research, Innovation and Technology Award (RITA) for "Systems Innovation of the Year"
In 1982 Eicon launched DisCache, a very high-speed, networked, cached hard-disk drive for small personal computers including Apple II and NEC computers, prior to the launch of the IBM PC in the UK. Initially 10MB, then 20MB and finally 40MB systems were available, which also networked up to 128 computers together, at ~10Mb/sec.
Eicon's Apple II clients all wanted much more storage than Apple's own 5.25-inch 142KB floppy disks could provide. So we designed and manufactured disk controllers and drive systems to provide first 250KB, then 500KB and finally 1MB per drive 8-inch floppy-drive systems for the Apple II.
Hooley was one of the 4-man team at the Cambridge Institute of Astronomy beginning in 1974 that designed and built the SRC Automatic Plate Measuring Machine (APM) that came on-line in 1979 and ran as a National Facility to astronomers world-wide for more than 25 years
Hooley co-founded in 1978, with his college friend John Hartley, his first company Eicon Research Ltd, initially as a technical consultancy. After noticing that many of their clients needed small computers for gathering data, controlling equipment and also as data processing machines, Eicon started selling Apple II computers. Later on, Hooley and Hartley were joined on the Board by Dr Beth Hutchison, who was Director of Software.
University of Cambridge Doctor of Philosophy dissertation, titled "The Statistical Properties of Extragalactic Radio Sources", was submitted in 1976 It was one of the first PhD theses in the World to be printed by a computer, using Hooley's HPP early word-processor..
Frustrated by the problem of hand-typing and correcting academic papers, in 1972, 11 years before the launch of Microsoft's Word V1.0, Hooley developed HPP (Hooley Paginating Program) that allowed documents to be entered on punched cards via a keypunch machine and printed on the University of Cambridge's central computer, an IBM370 mainframe.
In 1972 at the Cavendish Laboratory, University of Cambridge, Hooley developed RADARS (Radio Astronomy Data Analysis and Retrieval System) named for the British pioneers of radio-astronomy who were all radar developers during WWII.
Awarded the IEE Prize for the Year for Distinction in his Electronics / Physics / Maths degree course, and awarded a 1st class honours degree from University of London
A high-speed artificial neuron simulator (modelled on McCulloch & PItts') was developed by Hooley while a University of London undergraduate, in his Lab at Chelsea.
This one had a record player inside as well... custom built for Hooley's college room in Chelsea
After some years experimenting with short-wave radio electronics, Hooley used his skills to design and build a guitar amplifier - using valves/tubes of course!
As a school art & mechanical-engineering project, Hooley designed and built an 8-string electric bass guitar
After converting an outhouse into a "chemistry lab" Hooley moved on to electronics and started making his own equipment, including an RF signal generator, a multi-output DC power supply, an oscilloscope and a high-gain pre-amplifier.
An early fascination with architectural forms lead to the creation of this hyperbolic paraboloid by the mill-stream, made of bamboo (which grew in the valley, and had been previously utilised to make weapons-grade bows and arrows!),
One of Hooley's earliest constructions - a dam in the mill stream running along the bottom of the valley (probably with the help of his big brother Chris!).