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TWST: Would you give us a brief historical sketch of the company and a
picture of the things you're doing at the present time?
Mr. Grollman: National Scientific Corporation is a small, public, technology-
driven company. We've been in business since 1996. Most of our early years were
focused on semiconductor development and building up a patent library. In the
last several years, we've been moving from chip development to embedded
technology applications for public safety, in particular for mobile wireless
applications in school transportation environments, especially video tracking
and surveillance on school buses, using RFID to keep track of passengers getting
on and off of buses, and tracking police, fire, and other first responder safety
vehicles to enhance response time and improve public safety in general. We are
going into our second year of aggressive operations and growth and deployment of
those technologies into this $12 billion/year often-overlooked sector. We look
forward to some extensive growth in those markets as the country begins to look
more and more at technology as a way to enhance public safety and to increase
the efficiency of first responders and other types of safety applications. TWST: Would you describe several of your most important products?
Mr. Grollman: Our premier product at the moment is our Travado mobile wireless
video solution, designed principally for public transportation and used mainly
by the school bus districts, which comprise the largest public transportation
system in North America. There are roughly 23.5 million students who ride school
buses somewhere in the US every day. The fleet is comprised of approximately
450,000 different vehicles. Our technology is unique on a couple of fronts. It
resides within the bus and digitally records video information. The primary
purpose of doing that is to allow the driver to focus on safely operating the
vehicle, but to still provide some oversight of up to 80 plus students who might
be riding on that bus.
We take that information and combine it with GPS data so that we can not only
display an image in real-time slow motion video of what's going on, but we can
localize it very accurately, so we know where that vehicle is located. And
should an incident occur, we're able to combine that location information to
present a complete picture for someone trying to resolve an issue. We also use
high speed WiFi to cost-effectively download that information. Most of the other
technologies that are out there today have, in some cases, video tape
technology, which is typically not reliable in a vehicle, or they have some type
of removable hard drive technology, where the users have to go out and actually
yank something out of the vehicle to be able to view the video. With our
technology, as soon as the bus returns to a WiFi zone, such as the bus yard or
school, the information is immediately extracted through the air so that
management can immediately review video data and also GPS data to make sure the
buses are operating in the proper locations and at the proper speeds.
The other way we extend this technology is by offering the option of tracking
individual students as they get on and off the bus, using either their student
ID card, a bus card, or an RFID device, so that we can keep parents informed
about where kids are at any given time. If a child is missing, we're able to
produce a report that this kid got on the bus at such and such a stop, at such
and such a time, and got off at this other stop to help parents and schools keep
kids safe. We have some unique tie-ins to that technology. The primary
application is to combat truancy. For example, we can send an e-mail to mom's
cell phone to tell her that her kid got safely to school at 8:12 this morning.
That application of GPS technology, wireless technology, and Internet technology
to create a complete answer for parents and for schools is something that our
customers are getting quite excited about and something nobody else is offering
in the market today.
Tickers included in this excerpt: NSCT
For more information call (212) 952 7433. The
Wall Street Transcript does not endorse any of the comments made by interviewees, and does
not make stock recommendations.
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