Member Article

Blue Planet Camera Takes Tiny North West Tech Company to the Emmys

Lisden Technology Represents Winning International Team at the Engineering Emmy Awards in LA

Lisden Technology, a custom software development company based in Chester in the North West of England, is a team of just two people; however, size is no obstacle to innovation and international collaboration in the digital era. The Lisden partnership recently collected an award at the Engineering Emmys in LA in respect of a unique video technology developed by a small team spread across the globe.

The Engineering Emmys, which are the technology equivalent of the Primetime Emmys, are awarded by The Television Academy in the US to recognise developments in broadcast technology. Lisden Technology’s Director and Software Engineer, Kelvin Lawson, and Sara Evans, Development Manager, attended the awards ceremony to accept the Engineering Plaque for the CATS animal-borne multi-sensor video system or CATS Cam.

The CATS Cam is a video camera and suite of sensors that can be attached humanely to animals to capture data and video footage from their point of view, including under the ocean. This technology has given scientists and wildlife filmmakers the unique opportunity to record natural animal behaviour and share this with television viewers. CATS Cams have captured world firsts in animal behaviour and the cameras were used in the recent BBC series Blue Planet II to provide a whales’-eye view under the ocean. CATS Cams have also been used in documentaries made by National Geographic and Discovery Channel amongst others, as well as being used for research purposes by Stanford University.

The CATS Cam was developed by the international Customised Animal Tracking Solutions (CATS) team with Lisden’s Kelvin Lawson working remotely as Chief Software Engineer on the project alongside CATS directors Dr Peter Kraft in Germany and Dr Nikolai Liebsch in Australia. With the other Emmy award-winning technologies being developed by companies based in the US and one other from Australia, the Lisden partnership were particularly proud to attend the ceremony to represent the UK and Europe’s role in technological innovation.

Talking about CATS Cam, Kelvin Lawson said: “It’s great to be part of a project where the software I write helps people to learn more about the world around us”. Kelvin went on to say “It was a real honour to attend the Emmys ceremony and it’s great that the work everyone has put into the CATS Cam has been recognised by TV industry experts and other engineers”.

The Emmy ceremony took place on October 24 2018 in downtown LA and was hosted by Kirsten Vangsness, who fittingly plays a technical analyst in the TV drama series Criminal Minds.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Sara Evans .