Published date: 3 September 2021

This notice was replaced on 1 December 2021

This notice does not contain the most up-to-date information about this procurement. The most recent notice is:

Awarded contract (published 1 December 2021)

Closed opportunity - This means that the contract is currently closed. The buying department may be considering suppliers that have already applied, or no suitable offers were made.


Contract summary

Industry

  • Laboratory, optical and precision equipments (excl. glasses) - 38000000

Location of contract

TW11 0LW

Value of contract

£0 to £110,000

Procurement reference

tender_284557/994083

Published date

3 September 2021

Closing date

4 October 2021

Closing time

12pm

Contract start date

1 November 2021

Contract end date

31 January 2022

Contract type

Supply contract

Procedure type

Open procedure (below threshold)

Any interested supplier may submit a tender in response to an opportunity notice.

This procedure can be used for procurements below the relevant contract value threshold.

Contract is suitable for SMEs?

Yes

Contract is suitable for VCSEs?

No

Description

In partnership with the Met Office, NPL will be conducting a long-term outdoor experiment to monitor the degradation of autonomous vehicle (AV) vision systems under changing weather conditions. As part of this project, NPL wishes to procure a measurement solution that includes an optical transceiver to measure the free-space optical path loss from visible to infra-red between two or more points up to 250 metres apart, where the absorption of light is caused by air, rain, snow or fog.

We require several reference instruments to provide a baseline, calibrated measurement of the environmental conditions. For example, in weather-monitoring, solar irradiance, rainfall, droplet size etc will be acquired in real time. The AV sensors will be directed towards several calibrated targets and their change in performance with weather observed.

To fully analyse the AV sensors, a baseline measurement of atmospheric path loss between AV sensor and target is required. The maximum range of the testbed is 250m, but we need to quantify the optical path loss from visible to infra-red (IR) for ranges of 10, 25, 50, 100, 150 and 250m. The use of multiple retro-reflecting targets may be utilised but if an instrument has alternative capability to undertake the measurement, this will be attractive. The minimal operational spectral range must be continuous from 350nm to 850nm and have some bands of coverage from 800nm to ideally 15µm. The required spectral resolution does not require the need for chemical signature analysis and a target of 10nm is sought over the visible range. If higher resolution is available, this will be seen as a useful feature, but a balance between data acquisition and resolution must be achieved to enable data capture in less than a second.

Participation is via the London Universities eSourcing Portal. Participants must provide qualification information.

More information

Links

About the buyer

Contact name

Simon Coller

Address

Hampton Road
TEDDINGTON
TW11 0LW
England

Email

simon.coller@npl.co.uk

Website

www.npl.co.uk