December 24, 2007
Spy games | Technology Systems Inc. moves beyond virtual reality to create high-tech software for the defense industry
Once a week, software engineers at Technology Systems Inc. in Brunswick get up from behind their computer screens and walk down the hall to the nearby Jai Yoga studio. After 30 minutes of flexing, breathing, sun saluting and downward dog bending, the stretched and refreshed crew returns to its duties of designing high-tech applications for the U.S. Department of Defense.
The yoga classes are so popular that the company's chief operating officer, Tom Zysk, says he's considering signing the office up for a second weekly class. And when a teacher recently failed to appear for a regularly scheduled session ˆ the first time she had ever been absent ˆ Technology Systems' 15 or so male engineers were visibly disappointed. One lingered by the door a few extra minutes in case she showed up.
"I think we're maybe a little bit different," says Zysk, referring to their yoga breaks. "It's a positive thing to keep them healthy."
The yoga is part of an overall creative environment deliberately fostered at Technology Systems, or TSI, to keep the ideas flowing and the defense contracts coming. When TSI's crew is not engaged in ancient meditative practices, it's working on imagining and designing cutting-edge technology, primarily for the Department of Defense. Although the company also is working on a variety of other fairly fantastical products, TSI's major focus is creating augmented reality systems for the U.S. Navy.
Although TSI initially comes across as unusual and even quirky ˆ especially for a company contracted with the military ˆ it is actually part of a cadre of innovative small businesses around the country that in the last 25 years have become increasingly valuable to the DOD. The military relies on, and pays for, many of the advances that come out of little technology outfits ˆ because it's the smaller, more flexible companies, in the end, that frequently serve as the incubators for the freshest ideas. "[In general], they pay small companies to make the breakthroughs, and pay the bigger companies to take these breakthroughs and develop them," Zysk explains. TSI now employs 19, but expects to hire four new software engineers.
But TSI's strengths ˆ its ingenuity and creativity ˆ are also its challenges. Zysk says the company's biggest hurdle is the stage between developing new technologies and making the leap to integrating the technology into real life. Zysk says, "You have to transition between improving something to making something concrete and definable. We're very technology oriented. When we make that transition, that can be a challenge."
But news has been good lately. Zysk says that just in the past couple of months, a special Navy unit has shown interest in the company's offerings. In early December, the Explosive Ordnance Disposal Mobile Unit One tested the company's augmented reality systems off of San Diego. Based on the results, Zysk says the mine detection and disposal team is considering putting the systems on four of its craft and potentially adding more in the future.
"It's the nature of technology," Zysk says, to progress slowly. "It took the Wright brothers a lot of time to put someone onboard."
Leapfrogging reality
Technology Systems was founded in 1981 by Chuck Benton, who moved the company to Wiscasset in 1984 and then settled it in its current Brunswick location in 2006. The light-filled office overlooks the Androscoggin Falls and is close to several rivers where the company can try its fledgling technology out on specially equipped boats.
Benton, who is from Massachusetts, says he has built his company in Maine based on lifestyle choices, not for its highly-skilled workforce. His first employee was a carpenter who had taken a software class or two.
But much has changed in the past two decades. "Now we have highly qualified people knocking down our door," he says, adding that he likes to hire students who have graduated from the Maine School of Science and Mathematics in Limestone.
"Most of our employees are born and raised in Maine," Benton says. "Culturally, there is a different mindsetˆ We don't push time cards here. We keep core hours, but you go home and dream about your project," and at times work late into the night.
As he has steered his company forward, Benton has also watched the technology economy in Maine grow. In 1992, when Benton joined the board of a new trade association for software developers, then called MESDA and now referred to as TechMaine, seven companies were members. Now, almost 300 companies are signed up. "It's been fun watching technology become a part of the regional economy," he says.
Benton has had a front-row seat to the emergence of the technology sector. He's commonly referred to as the guy who created the first version of the 1980s adult video game Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards, and who worked on the seminal arcade game Frogger. He later transferred his video game expertise to increasingly sophisticated military applications ˆ a lesson that high school technology instructors might find useful when prodding their students into thinking about careers.
TSI's objective is to make navigational and tactical systems that present an über-reality, boosting what is already visible in the environment with technologically derived information. For example, the company builds systems that integrate camera imagery with data from a variety of inputs, like Global Positioning Systems, nautical charts or mine locators, and then displays all the accumulated information on one screen.
"That 2-D to 3-D conversion, where a lot of people make errors, we do that for you," explains Zysk, who worked 27 years as a naval officer. He explains that when ship or tank operators go back and forth between checking computer screens for info on anything from route boundaries to underwater mines to encroaching enemy combatants, and then return to peer out the windshield, they must synthesize both the computer information and the real world. And this can lead to misjudgments. But, "if everything is in one fused picture, it all makes sense to a human being," Zysk says.
This technology is referred to as augmented reality, a step up from virtual reality, and is defined by its combination of live video with synthetic, computer-generated graphics. At its best, it can help a ship completely break its dependence on real-life visual cues. After Hurricane Katrina blew away buoys and toppled towers in the Gulf of Mexico, a Maine Maritime Academy boat outfitted with TSI technology was able to recreate the buoys so it could safely sail on to provide disaster relief.
Technology Systems inhabits a particular niche, developing augmented reality systems for maritime use. But it also is working to build communication systems into robotic vehicles that can operate undersea, on land or in the air autonomously or by remote control, the wave of the military's future, both Benton and Zysk say.
The R&D backbone
Public funding that supports innovation at small businesses has greatly enhanced Technology Systems, as well as helped Maine's technology sector grow. Benton won't disclose TSI's annual revenues ˆ he says it's more than $1 million and under $10 million ˆ but says 20% every year comes from the U.S. Small Business Administration's Small Business Innovation Research Program, or SBIR.
SBIR, along with its twin, the Small Business Technology Transfer Program, is a federal program that started in 1982 and now feeds more than $2 billion annually to companies with fewer than 500 employees. (About half of TSI's revenue comes from Navy contracts, and the remainder is subcontracted with other defense companies, Benton says.)
Karen West, the Maine Technology Institute's SBIR consultant, says the program has grown every year. And since 1983, SBIR has awarded about $51.7 million to Maine companies, according to an SBA online database. The funding supports research that's applicable to federal programs in industries from defense to education. Maine's success rate at attracting the awards, 23% to 25%, is higher than the national average of 16%, according to Maine Technology Institute President Betsy Biemann, who says that might be chalked up to the smaller number of companies seeking funding.
The Maine Technology Institute does its part, though, to attract funding by offering up to $5,000 in matching grants to Maine companies to help them apply. SBIR seed grants can be as much as $100,000 to develop a prototype that's useful to a federal department. If all goes well, companies can then receive up to $750,000 to push their innovation closer to commercialization.
(The Maine Technology Institute is the biggest funder in Maine, having funneled $40 million to companies here since 2000, Biemann points out. It also has awarded nearly $470,000 in matching grants to Technology Systems in the past five years.)
While Technology Systems is not the top company in Maine receiving SBIR grants, West calls it a "leader." Since 1987, the company has received almost $5 million from 13 R&D grants, mostly from the DOD, according to the SBA. The National Science Foundation, too, has funded Technology Systems, giving it about $600,000 since 2001, for research in "autonomous undersea systems networks."
At the moment, the company is channeling about 25% of its resources into developing communications systems for unmanned undersea, air and land vehicles. "That is the direction the defense department is going in," Zysk says. Autonomous vehicles are safer and cheaper; for instance, the cost of one manned vehicle might equal the cost of 50 autonomous ones, Benton says, and the latter can go to soaring heights or to the bottom of the sea without having to protect anyone inside.
The company, to test its ever-developing equipment, will at times demonstrate an "unmanned aerial vehicle," flying it inside the office and landing it on a light fixture 15 feet high, or take out the company SUV, outfitted with cameras on its ski rack, to cruise down Maine Street, checking whether the augmented reality system accurately is picking up real-life obstacles. "We know exactly where we are and what's coming," Zysk says.
He tells a story of taking a colleague on a fully outfitted company boat down the Sasanoa River nearby, and returning at dusk through a narrow passage called Upper Hell Gate. The Coast Guard had pulled all the buoys in preparation for winter and the current was flowing at a brisk seven knots around ledges, rocky outcrops and shallow waters. Despite the hazards, Zysk was able to navigate the passage by following virtual buoys, all of which were depicted on his display screen. And he says he was speeding along at 44 knots, which should, he points out, be meaningful to any captain who's ever made it through Upper Hell Gate in one piece.
"I said, 'Wow, this stuff really works,'" he says.
The yoga classes are so popular that the company's chief operating officer, Tom Zysk, says he's considering signing the office up for a second weekly class. And when a teacher recently failed to appear for a regularly scheduled session ˆ the first time she had ever been absent ˆ Technology Systems' 15 or so male engineers were visibly disappointed. One lingered by the door a few extra minutes in case she showed up.
"I think we're maybe a little bit different," says Zysk, referring to their yoga breaks. "It's a positive thing to keep them healthy."
The yoga is part of an overall creative environment deliberately fostered at Technology Systems, or TSI, to keep the ideas flowing and the defense contracts coming. When TSI's crew is not engaged in ancient meditative practices, it's working on imagining and designing cutting-edge technology, primarily for the Department of Defense. Although the company also is working on a variety of other fairly fantastical products, TSI's major focus is creating augmented reality systems for the U.S. Navy.
Although TSI initially comes across as unusual and even quirky ˆ especially for a company contracted with the military ˆ it is actually part of a cadre of innovative small businesses around the country that in the last 25 years have become increasingly valuable to the DOD. The military relies on, and pays for, many of the advances that come out of little technology outfits ˆ because it's the smaller, more flexible companies, in the end, that frequently serve as the incubators for the freshest ideas. "[In general], they pay small companies to make the breakthroughs, and pay the bigger companies to take these breakthroughs and develop them," Zysk explains. TSI now employs 19, but expects to hire four new software engineers.
But TSI's strengths ˆ its ingenuity and creativity ˆ are also its challenges. Zysk says the company's biggest hurdle is the stage between developing new technologies and making the leap to integrating the technology into real life. Zysk says, "You have to transition between improving something to making something concrete and definable. We're very technology oriented. When we make that transition, that can be a challenge."
But news has been good lately. Zysk says that just in the past couple of months, a special Navy unit has shown interest in the company's offerings. In early December, the Explosive Ordnance Disposal Mobile Unit One tested the company's augmented reality systems off of San Diego. Based on the results, Zysk says the mine detection and disposal team is considering putting the systems on four of its craft and potentially adding more in the future.
"It's the nature of technology," Zysk says, to progress slowly. "It took the Wright brothers a lot of time to put someone onboard."
Leapfrogging reality
Technology Systems was founded in 1981 by Chuck Benton, who moved the company to Wiscasset in 1984 and then settled it in its current Brunswick location in 2006. The light-filled office overlooks the Androscoggin Falls and is close to several rivers where the company can try its fledgling technology out on specially equipped boats.
Benton, who is from Massachusetts, says he has built his company in Maine based on lifestyle choices, not for its highly-skilled workforce. His first employee was a carpenter who had taken a software class or two.
But much has changed in the past two decades. "Now we have highly qualified people knocking down our door," he says, adding that he likes to hire students who have graduated from the Maine School of Science and Mathematics in Limestone.
"Most of our employees are born and raised in Maine," Benton says. "Culturally, there is a different mindsetˆ We don't push time cards here. We keep core hours, but you go home and dream about your project," and at times work late into the night.
As he has steered his company forward, Benton has also watched the technology economy in Maine grow. In 1992, when Benton joined the board of a new trade association for software developers, then called MESDA and now referred to as TechMaine, seven companies were members. Now, almost 300 companies are signed up. "It's been fun watching technology become a part of the regional economy," he says.
Benton has had a front-row seat to the emergence of the technology sector. He's commonly referred to as the guy who created the first version of the 1980s adult video game Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards, and who worked on the seminal arcade game Frogger. He later transferred his video game expertise to increasingly sophisticated military applications ˆ a lesson that high school technology instructors might find useful when prodding their students into thinking about careers.
TSI's objective is to make navigational and tactical systems that present an über-reality, boosting what is already visible in the environment with technologically derived information. For example, the company builds systems that integrate camera imagery with data from a variety of inputs, like Global Positioning Systems, nautical charts or mine locators, and then displays all the accumulated information on one screen.
"That 2-D to 3-D conversion, where a lot of people make errors, we do that for you," explains Zysk, who worked 27 years as a naval officer. He explains that when ship or tank operators go back and forth between checking computer screens for info on anything from route boundaries to underwater mines to encroaching enemy combatants, and then return to peer out the windshield, they must synthesize both the computer information and the real world. And this can lead to misjudgments. But, "if everything is in one fused picture, it all makes sense to a human being," Zysk says.
This technology is referred to as augmented reality, a step up from virtual reality, and is defined by its combination of live video with synthetic, computer-generated graphics. At its best, it can help a ship completely break its dependence on real-life visual cues. After Hurricane Katrina blew away buoys and toppled towers in the Gulf of Mexico, a Maine Maritime Academy boat outfitted with TSI technology was able to recreate the buoys so it could safely sail on to provide disaster relief.
Technology Systems inhabits a particular niche, developing augmented reality systems for maritime use. But it also is working to build communication systems into robotic vehicles that can operate undersea, on land or in the air autonomously or by remote control, the wave of the military's future, both Benton and Zysk say.
The R&D backbone
Public funding that supports innovation at small businesses has greatly enhanced Technology Systems, as well as helped Maine's technology sector grow. Benton won't disclose TSI's annual revenues ˆ he says it's more than $1 million and under $10 million ˆ but says 20% every year comes from the U.S. Small Business Administration's Small Business Innovation Research Program, or SBIR.
SBIR, along with its twin, the Small Business Technology Transfer Program, is a federal program that started in 1982 and now feeds more than $2 billion annually to companies with fewer than 500 employees. (About half of TSI's revenue comes from Navy contracts, and the remainder is subcontracted with other defense companies, Benton says.)
Karen West, the Maine Technology Institute's SBIR consultant, says the program has grown every year. And since 1983, SBIR has awarded about $51.7 million to Maine companies, according to an SBA online database. The funding supports research that's applicable to federal programs in industries from defense to education. Maine's success rate at attracting the awards, 23% to 25%, is higher than the national average of 16%, according to Maine Technology Institute President Betsy Biemann, who says that might be chalked up to the smaller number of companies seeking funding.
The Maine Technology Institute does its part, though, to attract funding by offering up to $5,000 in matching grants to Maine companies to help them apply. SBIR seed grants can be as much as $100,000 to develop a prototype that's useful to a federal department. If all goes well, companies can then receive up to $750,000 to push their innovation closer to commercialization.
(The Maine Technology Institute is the biggest funder in Maine, having funneled $40 million to companies here since 2000, Biemann points out. It also has awarded nearly $470,000 in matching grants to Technology Systems in the past five years.)
While Technology Systems is not the top company in Maine receiving SBIR grants, West calls it a "leader." Since 1987, the company has received almost $5 million from 13 R&D grants, mostly from the DOD, according to the SBA. The National Science Foundation, too, has funded Technology Systems, giving it about $600,000 since 2001, for research in "autonomous undersea systems networks."
At the moment, the company is channeling about 25% of its resources into developing communications systems for unmanned undersea, air and land vehicles. "That is the direction the defense department is going in," Zysk says. Autonomous vehicles are safer and cheaper; for instance, the cost of one manned vehicle might equal the cost of 50 autonomous ones, Benton says, and the latter can go to soaring heights or to the bottom of the sea without having to protect anyone inside.
The company, to test its ever-developing equipment, will at times demonstrate an "unmanned aerial vehicle," flying it inside the office and landing it on a light fixture 15 feet high, or take out the company SUV, outfitted with cameras on its ski rack, to cruise down Maine Street, checking whether the augmented reality system accurately is picking up real-life obstacles. "We know exactly where we are and what's coming," Zysk says.
He tells a story of taking a colleague on a fully outfitted company boat down the Sasanoa River nearby, and returning at dusk through a narrow passage called Upper Hell Gate. The Coast Guard had pulled all the buoys in preparation for winter and the current was flowing at a brisk seven knots around ledges, rocky outcrops and shallow waters. Despite the hazards, Zysk was able to navigate the passage by following virtual buoys, all of which were depicted on his display screen. And he says he was speeding along at 44 knots, which should, he points out, be meaningful to any captain who's ever made it through Upper Hell Gate in one piece.
"I said, 'Wow, this stuff really works,'" he says.
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