Science, Innovation and Technology Committee
Oral evidence: Innovation showcase, HC 523
Tuesday 17 June 2025
Ordered by the House of Commons to be published on 17 June 2025.
Members present: Chi Onwurah (Chair); Dr Allison Gardner; Kit Malthouse; Steve Race; Dr Lauren Sullivan; Martin Wrigley.
Questions 21 - 23
Witness
I: Luke Emery, Director, Bright Idea.
Witness: Luke Emery.
Chair: Good morning. Welcome to the Science, Innovation and Technology Committee innovation showcase. The Committee wants to understand how the UK supports innovators and what more can be done. To inform our work, each week we select an innovator to share their story before our main evidence session. Dr Allison Gardner has chosen this week’s innovator.
Q21 Dr Gardner: I will be very quick because I don’t want to take too much of your time. This is Luke Emery. He founded Bright Idea; I’m still impressed that that name was not taken before. He is a Staffordshire Moorlands lad, went to Staffordshire University to do computer science and now lectures there in robotic programming and design. I met him because he is also an amazing parish councillor, using his data science skills to help the parish council understand all the work they do.
He is here today to present to us a prototype solution for embedded communications technology to augment transit systems in visitor attractions. What inspired him from a young age is our “near to” local visitor attraction, Alton Towers—others are available. He just likes to know what makes things tick. Over to you, Luke.
Luke Emery: Good morning, and thank you for your time and for the invite to come and share one of the projects I have been working on. Unlike some of the previous speakers that have attended the innovation showcase, I am comparatively at the start of my business journey as the founder of Bright Idea.
Bright Idea is developing technology solutions for themed entertainment attractions. We use hardware development and software development, adding things like 3D printing to work with prototypes and get them to a place where we can determine feasibility. The technology may be guest-facing, something that a guest would actively interact with during their visit to an attraction, be that a theme park, museum, water park or other visitor attraction type, or it may be something that benefits an attraction operator and plays behind the scenes, the latter being something I would like to talk about today with the augmenting transit systems.
One question I often hear is, “Why theme parks?” It is not necessarily a traditional route to take. It is fair to say that I am the resident nerd concerning things in themed entertainment. I love visiting the attractions just as much as having the opportunity to work with them. I think that is important as Bright Idea moves forward and develops a culture of theme-park people, who both get what makes attractions tick from a technology perspective and have an inherent passion for creating things that could potentially be enjoyed by generations to come, hopefully—if we do it right.
The solution I would like to share with you today looks to augment transit systems—the way that guests are conveyed through the attractions—with long-range, low-powered methods of communication that do not rely on the more traditional network set-ups, effectively transforming appropriate ride vehicles into modes within a larger industrial IoT set-up, transmitting messages over LoRa and LoRaWAN by extension.
Taking a quick glance at the landscape of the attraction industry in the UK, the annual attendance report compiled by the Themed Entertainment Association demonstrates growth across both the EMEA and international markets, with attendance at the top 25 international theme/amusement parks rising by 23%. There were 45.9 million guests between 2022-23. In the UK at the same time, we saw a 1.4% increase in attendance. According to a recent report, the market globally is estimated to be valued at $119 billion by 2034.
The industry in the UK is particularly exciting and is going through a transitional phase at the moment. There was a quite recent exciting announcement of a new park opening in the south of the country. Additionally, progress has been made on, potentially, two history-inspired attractions. This provides an opportunity to build on the reputation that the UK has for ambitious and unique attractions. It is something that I hope Bright Idea will get a chance to play a part in.
Transit systems at these attractions can range in scale and complexity. Some of the systems can traverse in excess of one kilometre at a height of over 200 feet and may even go through protected environments, which presents some challenges for traditional network infrastructure. They may not enjoy the benefit of the line of sight with an operator. This is one example where our new solution can provide valuable, real-time information and data that could later be analysed to evaluate trends and hopefully improve efficiency, and contribute towards the already very stringent safety standards.
On the vehicle side of it, embedded systems in development would take advantage of a suite of sensors to provide relevant information to an operator on the status of the individual mode within the IoT environment. It leverages low power modes of operation, where that could constrain power. Quite often a ride vehicle does not necessarily have a continuous source of power during its course. We also try to be as green as possible.
Additionally, the vehicle side system has I/Os to interface with other modular systems, potentially by other vendors, or something that we could add to a vehicle if needed. The data is transmitted through licence-free frequencies to a server, which provides event-driven updates to an operator. That can be on an application it could use for logging or for auditing. It can provide an expected standard of work should the operator require anything where there is a parameter that is nearing or outside expected values.
I am a firm believer that anyone and everyone should be able to experience our attractions. One use case of this that I would really like to see developed further—if we can find someone to work with on that particular point—would be a way to inform operators if a guest requires some additional assistance prior to reaching the platform. This could be on approach to an onload or an offload platform. The system would be able to inform the operators, and they could take a proactive approach to providing any additional assistance, as opposed to a reactive approach when arriving at the platform, and hopefully giving appropriate time for guests to feel comfortable and able to onboard and offboard safely. That illustrates one scenario. I am excited about things that we can achieve with the right data at the right time. It is not only limited to a transit system like that described, although there is a significant number of installations across Europe and the UK that meet that profile, both legacy and newly operational systems.
Developing the business started with a programme called Be Inspired which I was fortunate enough to join at the University of Staffordshire. At the time I enrolled it was an ERDF scheme. It offered a reimbursement grant, mentorship and workshops to develop an idea and something a bit more tangible. Building on lessons learned from that programme, and my background in computer science, product development has mostly been iterative, in the form of agile developments made possible by access to an affordable and remarkably powerful development board, similar to the one I am showing you now. They are very useful because they come with a whole bunch of peripherals, and we are able to interface over things like RS-232 with existing PLCs, ethernet and other forms of network equipment, and then GPIO for, effectively, anything that we might require that is supported by the peripherals on the board.
We spend time researching and auditing technology trends with an eye to understanding their potential application in attractions, and that solutions might need to address specific nuances in the industry. The value of these programmes for small and start-up businesses at or in partnership with universities cannot be understated. I believe it would be really useful to businesses exploring similar concepts—although likely in different verticals—for programmes to be extended to the next step beyond just start-up, and exploring outcomes such as successfully navigating product certification or access to facilities such as EMC testing in a way that can be distributed across the country, working with universities. Additionally, guidance and advice surrounding licensing in an increasingly software-oriented world will be invaluable, perhaps in similar format to the guidance offered by the IPO around copyright and trademarking. Used properly, software licensing can benefit everybody and contribute to the body of resources. Thank you very much for letting me share that with you.
Chair: Thank you; that is absolutely fascinating. We often say on the Committee that science and technology are everywhere, but I did not realise that they formed such an important part of the evolution of theme parks. Your journey from an initial programme to developing this very impressive board, or working with it, is really inspiring. Thank you very much, Luke Emery. Thank you, Allison, for bringing him in.
Q22 Dr Gardner: Could some of the stuff that you are doing be applicable to trains or larger transit systems?
Luke Emery: Absolutely.
Q23 Dr Gardner: I am just thinking about the proactive response that you need to see for people, if we are looking at accessibility for trains or if somebody falls ill. There is a lot of usefulness in it that could be rolled out into a wider thing.
Luke Emery: Yes, 100%. Things like the localised effects of weather, using trains as a distributed network as opposed to solely relying on weather stations, could be a similar use for the technology.
Chair: Thank you very much.