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Chris Frank believes that someday history buffs will be able to hold the secrets and statistics about every building in the world right in their hands.
Every structure, from its year of construction to its current status, will be on a gadget that fits in the palm, relayed to the device from dozens of databases via satellite technology.
Point it at a structure and up on a screen will appear information about its architecture or tidbits about events that occurred within its walls. Pictures, too.
Sightseers will just need to go to a hotel lobby, rent the device for $15 a day, and then they’re on their way.
Frank is the founder of Intelligent Spatial Technologies in Orono and the device called iPointer is the creator’s contribution to the ever-growing trillion-dollar tourism industry and the rapidly expanding field of consumer electronics.
There is a market for the product, Frank figures, because almost 60 percent of American adult travelers, or roughly 85 million people, include trips to historical places as part of their vacations.
Frank and three fellow University of Maine graduates who work with him are fine-tuning the iPointer at the university’s Target Technology Incubator on Godfrey Drive, a place where science or “geek stuff” intermingles with business assistance. The incubator’s success stories will be those commercial entities that can move out and stand on their own feet.
Frank wants to grow alongside his partners Brian Oickle and Markus Wuersch, both software engineers, and Anna Nakova, a management analyst. Their dream is to expand and add jobs to the state’s economy.
Frank’s business idea was born out of graduate research in sensor-based mobile spatial query systems or, in lay terms, studying how sensors can be used in portable devices to pinpoint locations. Its most common applicability is global positioning systems.
Intelligent Spatial’s iPointer incorporates GPS technology but goes beyond relying solely on it. The device is a combination of a standard personal display unit with a cell-phone connection and digital technology components.
In its current stage of development, the iPointer is a hodge-podge of parts with wires running from one piece to another. It’s not cheap, either, but neither were computers when they first came out.
“Right now all of the parts are $900,” Frank said during a recent demonstration of iPointer. “Nine hundred dollars is a little high for travel end-users.”
Within a year, Frank hopes to have the price down to a commercial level, a price point that has not been determined yet. He believes hotels and historical sites might be willing to pay a $200-per-month charge to cover hardware, technical training and data collection.
“We’ll provide everything for them for $200 a month,” he said.
Pricing is one of many projects on the to-do list.
What Frank has learned over the last couple of years is that it is all right to have a good idea for a business but it takes more than a scientific background to get it to market.
He’s collected more than $626,000 in federal and state grant money to fuel iPointer’s creation and has test-driven his product at trade shows worldwide.
But those actions on their own don’t get the device into travelers’ hands.
Frank has had to cut back on the amount of time he devotes to science and technology to network with the business community instead. It’s an education unto itself.
Bangor Daily News Executive Editor A. Mark Woodward is Frank’s mentor at the Bangor Region Leadership Institute, a program sponsored by the Bangor Region Chamber of Commerce that partners start-up business people with established professionals to help them make connections.
“When you start a company you have delusions of grandeur,” Frank said. “I didn’t know a lot of the little details. Where do I go to get a good patent attorney? I’ve got one now. But even things like where do I go to get good business cards?”
Frank has passed out hundreds of business cards as part of his networking efforts. From Bangor to Augusta to Portland, the name Intelligent Spatial Technologies is being mentioned as an up-and-coming company built with research conducted at the University of Maine and strengthened by U-Maine graduates turned IST professionals.
That makes Frank proud. But to build his company, Frank said he’s going to have to look beyond Bangor. The actual data that pop onto travelers’ screens has to come from literally dozens of databases.
“One start-up company is not going to survive alone in Bangor,” he said. “The more people we talk to the better it’s going to get.”
The iPointer is patent pending and the U.S. Patent Office’s evaluation should take two years. In the meantime, Intelligent Spatial Technologies will step up its collection of information that vacationers actually will see when they point to learn about a building. The University of Maine’s buildings are the first to be catalogued. From there, different towns and regions will be pursued.
The initial customer markets will be universities, hotels and American cultural travelers.
Within a few years, Frank hopes vacationers will not have to stand in front of a building and ask, “I wonder when that was built?” iPointer will get them the information quickly.
“It’s a much easier and more fluid interaction with your environment,” Frank said.
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