Acagi poised to tap security markets

Thursday, June 22, 2006

Click here to enlarge this photo Photo courtesy 3 Roads communications Acagi’s Tom Wragg (left) and Peter Spatharis plan to start manufacturing their company’s digital indexing device for cameras within 18 months.

The device uses voice- and face-recognition software to digitally index film and video in real time, as it is being shot, ‘‘making acquisition and indexing [of the footage] immediately available,” explained CEO Peter S. Spatharis.

Company officials hope to mass produce the device — dubbed the Image Acquisition and Exploitation Camera System — within the next 18 months.

Besides immediately indexing the footage, the box ‘‘also allows for speech-to-text translation that you can perform a key-word search on,” Spatharis said. ‘‘Generally this process is done in two to five steps.” The Acagi device does it in one step.

Acagi is a ‘‘virtual” client of the Frederick Innovative Technology Center Inc.; it isn’t housed at the Hood College facility, but uses incubator services.

Spatharis and company vice president Tom Wragg recently presented a prototype of their product to Rep. Roscoe G. Bartlett (R-Dist. 6) of Buckeystown. The box that piggy-backs on a camera has significant potential, Bartlett said — ‘‘if it works, of course.”

‘‘It would make identifying the bad guys quicker and easier,” he said. ‘‘Their technology could be very useful in the field. This [technology] can identify 30 or 40 people at the scene of a terrorism incident and give information in not more than a couple of minutes. If you have to wait an hour [to process the information], the target of interest could be miles away” by the time he is identified.

‘‘The military should be very interested,” Bartlett said.

Paul H. Nisbet, a homeland security analyst with JSA Research in Newport, R.I., said such technology ‘‘would be very much in demand. Right now Lockheed has a $200 million contract to put security cameras in the subways in New York City,” where the Acagi device could be very useful.

While Spatharis, a former Greek army officer, envisions a strong market with the military, he also sees a media market that could be worth $8 billion per year.

‘‘CNN has a cap of shooting 90,000 hours of video per year,” Spatharis said. ‘‘CNN committed to having 150,000 hours indexed. Not all networks have done that.”

‘‘The basic problem the BBC had,” said Wragg, a former BBC employee, ‘‘is it was going to cost $1.3 trillion for the BBC to digitize their library. One of the big problems [for broadcast companies] is the volume of material. The BBC transmits 1,000 hours per day. This technology will help them manage it.”

The prototype, and its successive incarnations, are being tested by 3 Roads Communications, a video production company in Frederick. When the system is ready for market, 3 Roads will train interested companies in its use.

The company’s current dilemma is downsizing the device, Spatharis said. He expects the marketed version to be one-fourth its current size and weight.

He and Wragg have production plans in place.

‘‘All the engineering and design will be done here in Frederick,” Spatharis said. ‘‘We will try to use as much labor as possible here in Frederick.”

Molly Boyle, vice president of operations at 3 Roads, said her company has already gauged interest in the media sector. ‘‘We have identified beta [testing] sites,” she said. ‘‘We know to whom this is going and for how long.”

Development of the product was funded privately and via funding from the Maryland Technology Development Corp., Wragg said.