OXEMS (Oxford Electromagnetic Solutions Limited) was formed after a University of Oxford R&D team had successfully tackled a Mapping the Underworld challenge. Professor David Edwards, OXEMS Chief Scientific Officer, led the founding team that developed the OXEMS technology at the University of Oxford. In his own words Professor Edwards says: ‘We originally started working on the problems industry faced in this area as part of the ‘Mapping the Underworld’ call from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), which led to the domain ‘barcode’ approach. Our previous work in underwater pipe detection enabled us to model the response from wet environments and develop the OXEMS technology based on a long history of working on long range detection and positioning systems.’

This initial work resulted in the revolutionary OXEMS Tag, now patented, that is better suited to underground conditions than traditional RFID markers. With the Tag challenges solved, OXEMS was formed to commercialise the idea. Further work was done to develop the Detector, Database and App that now complete the end-to-end, integrated System.