Illusion Hopes to Make Better Emergency Response a Reality
Life-threatening emergencies like the 1994 Northridge earthquake require the mobilization of hundreds of emergency response agencies--from local police, fire and medical teams to representatives of federal organizations.
As nightmarish as such events may be, communication and the sharing of critical information between agencies, and between the folks at headquarters and those in the field, can make the situation even more frustrating.
“Different agencies all have different hardware and software so they cannot communicate with each other,” said Matt Walton, executive vice president of Illusion Inc., a Westlake Village-based firm that is working to simplify emergency communication.
Based on its plan to develop an intranet system--creating software components that will link the agencies’ varied systems via the World Wide Web--Illusion has been awarded a $250,000 grant from the California Technology Investment Partnership (CalTIP). The state-funded program was designed to stimulate the creation of new technology and products.
Illusion was one of six Southern California businesses--two from Ventura County--that were awarded grants this year through the nonprofit Los Angeles Regional Technology Alliance.
A total of 28 businesses from throughout the state were given funding in the CalTIP program.
All CalTIP awards are contingent on the companies’ receiving related grants from the federal government.
In December, Walton said, Illusion will apply for a grant of approximately $2 million from the National Institute of Standards and Technology.
From its founding in 1989 to 1994, Illusion used its technology to develop aircraft and military training exercises and virtual-reality battlefield simulations for the armed forces.
In 1994 it merged with an entertainment technology company and focused the bulk of its efforts away from defense.
On Oct. 9, the company is scheduled to unveil the largest of those entertainment projects--25 simulation Indy race cars--at the Sahara Hotel in Las Vegas.
The cars are the first in a line of SpeedSports products Illusion plans to bring to public hot spots.
But for the CalTIP grant, the emphasis is on the development of “command and control systems” that allow for ease in communication during times when speed, detail and accuracy are vital.
Illusion’s intranet systems, dubbed E Team, are currently being used by National Guard brigades in Idaho and Georgia.
“Communication in the event of a disaster is largely voice-driven, and only a limited amount of information can be shared by voice,” Walton said. “You can’t send maps around very efficiently at all. The way it is sent now is by [messenger] or fax machines, and those are very significant problems.”
Walton cited the Malibu fires of 1993. “The lag between the county Fire Department updating the maps and the handoff of those updated maps to the people in the field took six hours,” he said. “If you can’t update fire maps more rapidly than six hours, you’re basically reconstructing a history of the event rather than giving people information that is critical to them.”
Walton said the information can be delivered quickly over the Internet, but the intranet system his company is developing will be far more user-friendly.
“What we’ve discovered in working with the National Guard and the emergency-management community is that firemen and policemen and medical personnel don’t want to have to go to school to learn how to send maps around,” he said. “By creating an integrated suite of software behind a user-friendly interface, they can point and click and very rapidly transfer information between each other without having to become Internet software gurus.”
Rohit Shukla, founder and president of the Los Angeles Regional Technology Alliance, said Illusion’s ability to transfer the technology it applied to the defense industry to other viable markets makes it a clear choice to be an award recipient.
“Illusion is the perfect poster child for the program,” said Shukla, a longtime entrepreneur. “Primarily the program is geared toward commercialization--creation of value-added jobs, creation of a company that’s going to actually live and breathe and work in California.”
Shukla said the grant program was designed particularly to help companies that were affected by the decline in the defense industry.
“The idea for [CalTIP] was born at a time when the cry in California was defense conversion and defense downsizing, and the idea was that we needed to leverage every resource we could,” he said.
“Illusion started off life in the defense field and evolved into an entertainment company as well,” Shukla said.
“To us, it was the interesting way this company kept approaching commercialization, finding new markets, adapting to the needs of the market and the customers. We felt they had important technology, important products, important commercial opportunities and important societal impacts.”
Also included among the regional grant winners was Sight Systems Inc., a Newbury Park company specializing in sensor and measurement technology. The company was awarded the $240,000 grant for its development of software tools that can handle extremely small measurements.
“These things might never see the light of day unless someone steps up to the plate and champions them--we see that as our role,” said Shukla, former director of aerospace business at the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp.
“And the fact that the state has put some money behind something should stimulate interest from other investment [sources].”
Shukla said he expects Ventura County to be well-represented in future CalTIP grant programs.
“Among the five Southern California counties, Ventura County represents to my mind the next high-growth area, particularly in information technology and telecommunications,” he said.
“It’s a very beautiful county, and why that’s important is because entrepreneurs like to live there. One thing you see is the Calabasas-Camarillo corridor. It is palpable and it is happening.”
