Chipping into AIM

(

), a spin-out of Imperial College London specialising in advanced electronic control technology, is set to make its debut on the stock exchange following its acquisition by an investment company.

The agreed purchase of ParOS by Oak Prospects follows 15 years of research at the university's Centre for Process Systems Engineering.

The company, which will change its name to ParOS plc, was set up as a business two years ago in a collaboration between Prof Stratos Pistikopoulos and Imperial Innovations, the university's technology commercialisation division.

The deal will see Imperial Innovations hold nine per cent in the newly enlarged group, which plans to float on London's Alternative Investment Market (AIM) later this month.

A developer of energy-saving control solutions, ParOS's core solution is known as 'advanced control technology on a chip' which is claimed to remove the need for bulky, slow and expensive computer hardware.

Working across three market sectors — automotive, process industries and personal medical devices — the company is preparing a number of prototypes to develop commercially.

ParOS is working on a model-based controller for the electronic regulation of the research Active Valve Train (AVT) system at Lotus Engineering. Imperial said it has been demonstrated running a Lotus AVT at constant speed, proving it performs satisfactorily for smooth polynomial profiles and that its tuning does not require the effort and expertise of conventional proportional derivative controllers. The next stage will be to demonstrate the applicability of the controller across a range of engine speeds and loads under changing conditions.

The deal with Oak Prospects, which is subject to conditions, is the latest in a string of spin-out activity from Imperial under the Imperial Innovations umbrella.

Other recent examples include a £150,000 investment in HeliSwirl, an engineering company whose pipe technology increases transport efficiency, and HydroVenturi, which has developed a novel method to generate power from tidal currents that has recently completed a £2.5m funding round.