Roke, legally Roke Manor Research Ltd, is a British company based at Roke Manor near Romsey, Hampshire, which conducts research and development in the fields of

communications Communication is commonly defined as the transmission of information. Its precise definition is disputed and there are disagreements about whether Intention, unintentional or failed transmissions are included and whether communication not onl ...

, networks, electronic

sensors A sensor is often defined as a device that receives and responds to a signal or stimulus. The stimulus is the quantity, property, or condition that is sensed and converted into electrical signal. In the broadest definition, a sensor is a devi ...

artificial intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is the capability of computer, computational systems to perform tasks typically associated with human intelligence, such as learning, reasoning, problem-solving, perception, and decision-making. It is a field of re ...

machine learning Machine learning (ML) is a field of study in artificial intelligence concerned with the development and study of Computational statistics, statistical algorithms that can learn from data and generalise to unseen data, and thus perform Task ( ...

data science Data science is an interdisciplinary academic field that uses statistics, scientific computing, scientific methods, processing, scientific visualization, algorithms and systems to extract or extrapolate knowledge from potentially noisy, stru ...

, Military decision support consultancy and operational analysis,

information assurance Information assurance (IA) is the practice of assuring information and managing risks related to the use, processing, storage, and data transmission, transmission of information. Information assurance includes protection of the data integrity, inte ...

, and human science. In addition to supporting its parent Chemring, Roke undertakes contract research and development, and product development work for both public and private sector customers. Products developed from research at Roke Manor include the

Hawk-Eye Hawk-Eye is a computer vision system used to visually track the trajectory of a ball and display a profile of its statistically most likely path as a moving image. It is used in more than 20 major sports, including cricket, tennis, Gaelic foo ...

ball tracker, which is now used widely in sports such as tennis, football, and cricket. Roke has been part of the Chemring Group since 2010, having been founded as part of the Plessey company to operate as a dedicated research and development centre, with mass production elsewhere, and later owned for almost 20 years by Siemens where it had a similar research role.

History

*1956 – Founded as Plessey Research Roke Manor Limited by the Plessey company. The first managing director was Harold J. Finden, an electrical engineer at Plessey. *1990 – Passed to GEC-

Siemens AG Siemens AG ( ) is a German multinational technology conglomerate. It is focused on industrial automation, building automation, rail transport and health technology. Siemens is the largest engineering company in Europe, and holds the posit ...

in a joint takeover. *1991 – Became wholly owned by

when GEC sold their 50% shareholding to Siemens Plessey Electronic Systems. *2010 – Acquired by the Chemring Group PLC. *2021 – Roke made its first acquisition since the founding in 1956, acquiring Cubica Technology Ltd. and their holding company Cubica Group.

Sites

The company's head office is at Roke Manor, Hampshire. It also has facilities in the

Barnwood Barnwood is a suburb and former civil parish in the city of Gloucester, in the county of Gloucestershire, England. It lies about east of the centre of the city. Barnwood was originally a small village on the Roman roads in Britannia, Roman r ...

area of

Gloucester Gloucester ( ) is a cathedral city, non-metropolitan district and the county town of Gloucestershire in the South West England, South West of England. Gloucester lies on the River Severn, between the Cotswolds to the east and the Forest of Dean ...

, Woking and in central Manchester. The Roke Manor site is based around a manor house which dates in part from 1653. The grounds had a walled garden, stable block and cottages when bought by Plessey in 1956, and initially these were re-used for laboratory space and meeting rooms, but in various modernisation programmes, many of the original buildings have been demolished and much of the grounds covered by purpose-built facilities and car parking. The main house, entrance lodge and walled garden remain.

Technology timeline

*1960 – Working prototype memory systems developed for the

supercomputer A supercomputer is a type of computer with a high level of performance as compared to a general-purpose computer. The performance of a supercomputer is commonly measured in floating-point operations per second (FLOPS) instead of million instruc ...

Atlas An atlas is a collection of maps; it is typically a bundle of world map, maps of Earth or of a continent or region of Earth. Advances in astronomy have also resulted in atlases of the celestial sphere or of other planets. Atlases have traditio ...

. *1975 – Designed and developed the world's first monolithic

gallium arsenide Gallium arsenide (GaAs) is a III-V direct band gap semiconductor with a Zincblende (crystal structure), zinc blende crystal structure. Gallium arsenide is used in the manufacture of devices such as microwave frequency integrated circuits, monoli ...

microwave circuit. *1995 – Work began on the Hostile Artillery LOcation system (HALO), an acoustic locator of guns and

mortars Mortar may refer to: * Mortar (weapon), an indirect-fire infantry weapon * Mortar (masonry), a material used to fill the gaps between blocks and bind them together * Mortar and pestle, a tool pair used to crush or grind * Mortar, Bihar, a village i ...

. HALO was developed to monitor ceasefire violations in the

Yugoslav wars The Yugoslav Wars were a series of separate but related#Naimark, Naimark (2003), p. xvii. ethnic conflicts, wars of independence, and Insurgency, insurgencies that took place from 1991 to 2001 in what had been the Socialist Federal Republic of ...

, and is in use with the

British Army The British Army is the principal Army, land warfare force of the United Kingdom. the British Army comprises 73,847 regular full-time personnel, 4,127 Brigade of Gurkhas, Gurkhas, 25,742 Army Reserve (United Kingdom), volunteer reserve perso ...

and other nations. *2000 – Won the 2000 Worldaware Innovation Award for work on

land mine A land mine, or landmine, is an explosive weapon often concealed under or camouflaged on the ground, and designed to destroy or disable enemy targets as they pass over or near it. Land mines are divided into two types: anti-tank mines, wh ...

clearance. *2001 – Developed the

vision-based ball tracking system.

Selected products

* RESOLVE – an electronic warfare manpack system for the intercept, geolocation and exploitation of tactical communications signals within the HF to SHF bands. In 2011 RESOLVE won a Queen's Award for Enterprise and Innovation. * Vigilance – a wide area

multilateration Trilateration is the use of distances (or "ranges") for determining the unknown position coordinates of a point of interest, often around Earth ( geopositioning). When more than three distances are involved, it may be called multilateration, f ...

system for tracking aircraft. Users include

Eurocontrol The European Organisation for the Safety of Air Navigation, commonly known as Eurocontrol (stylised ''EUROCONTROL''), is an international organisation working to achieve safe and seamless air traffic management across Europe. Founded in 1963, Eur ...

, in support of RVSM. * Miniature Radar Altimeters (MRA) – a range of MRA products primarily designed for use on airborne targets and

unmanned aerial vehicle An unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) or unmanned aircraft system (UAS), commonly known as a drone, is an aircraft with no human pilot, crew, or passengers onboard, but rather is controlled remotely or is autonomous.De Gruyter Handbook of Dron ...

s (UAVs). * Epsilon – a software tool designed to predict the radar cross section (RCS) of a target directly from its geometrical description. * IRIS – Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) equipment. * LOCATE – a suite of products for spectrum monitoring, direction finding, adaptive beamforming and

geolocation Geopositioning is the process of determining or estimating the geographic position of an object or a person. Geopositioning yields a set of Geographic coordinate system, geographic coordinates (such as latitude and longitude) in a given map datum ...

of HF signals. * LOCATE-T – team-based mobile version of the LOCATE system. * VIPER – electronic warfare planning and data triage. * DAMARC – data science in policing. * NELSON – driving Royal Navy digitisation. * HMEWC – High Mobility Electronic Warfare Capability (HMEWC) with integrated Command & Control, Electronic Surveillance and Electronic Attack, capable of operating in complex and contested RF environments.

References

External links

* {{coord, 50.9990, N, 1.5202, W, display=title, region:GB-HAM_type:landmark Technology companies of the United Kingdom Companies based in Hampshire Technology companies established in 1956 British companies established in 1956 Plessey