By Sean Wolfe

He’s always starting something.

Twenty years ago, James Ionson, the astrophysicist-turned-Cold Warrior, persuaded James Abrahamson, the U.S. Air Force general in charge of the Strategic Defense Initiative, to give him the funds to set up the Innovative Science and Technology (IST) program in 1985.

The IST subsequently became the research arm of SDI, and essentially acted as a strategic investor, sponsoring research in a wide range of fields—high energy lasers, optical computing, and superconductors among them. And Dr. Ionson had his hand on the cash spigot.

Times change: On Monday, Battelle Ventures announced it had backed Mr. Ionson’s new company, the homeland security startup Remote Reality, with $7.3 million in its first round of venture capital.

The elevator pitch for this Westborough, Massachusetts-based firm goes like this: What if you had a camera that could capture 360-degree views, plus the software to interpret those images, and the ability to zoom in on multiple points?

The answer, Mr. Ionson said, is exactly the kind of thing needed to survey buildings, borders, and—on the military side of the landscape—part the fog of war. The technology would give battlefield commanders the kind of god’s-eye view one typically associates with military simulation games.

The attraction, said Battelle Ventures general partner Ralph Taylor-Smith, is threefold. First, Battelle likes the homeland security space a great deal—this is its eighth investment in the sector, and such investments make up the bulk of its portfolio.

Also, the firm likes companies that have a military product that can be used in civilian or business spheres. Finally, there’s the non-dilutive aspect of being able to raise money from the government.

“I think the commercial sector, but also the business enterprise market, holds significant promise and potential for the company,” Mr. Taylor-Smith said.

Government Funding

The company has already secured $6 million in Small Business Innovation research and development grants from various military branches, including the Office of Naval Research and DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency).

The ONR contracts envision the use of Remote Reality systems to upgrade how submarine periscopes work, mast-mounted surveillance for surface ships, and perimeter monitoring for Marine bases.

DARPA was more interested in how the devices could be used to scan crowds, using facial recognition technology, and how troops could benefit from 360-degree thermal scanning to keep an eye out for intruders.

Now Mr. Ionson’s challenge will be to persuade the private sector that Remote’s systems are good for business as well.

The product-marketing strategy envisions how Remote Reality systems could leave the military and security sphere, and filter down to commercial applications. He said the primary purpose of the capital is to drop the costs of the systems and back a product-marketing program to persuade the private sector that Remote has built a better mousetrap.

Securing the Borders

“The secure border initiative is very electronic security intensive, so there’s numerous applications for us there,” said Mr. Ionson. “But by far the biggest opportunity is in the commercial sector—the gaming industry, casinos, commercial security, and crime prevention. What this does is disrupt the paradigm of intensive manpower needed in the surveillance loop.”

One application, for instance, could be a Remote Reality system in a high crime area where shootings are frequent. Remote’s systems could be coupled with acoustic detection—à la another security startup like ShotSpotter—so the source of a gunshot could be quickly identified, and photographed.

“You could have one in the middle of a hot zone and you can in real-time identify where shots are coming from and who fired them,” said Mr. Ionson. “That could be very useful as evidence in court, as well as the battlefield.”

Naturally, Remote is not alone in the field of full-circle surveillance, but its competitors are either small—like Cohoe, New York-based Mind’s Eye View; or ailing, like IPIX. Interestingly, IPIX, a leading innovator of the 360-degree camera concept during the first bubble, had used its technology mostly for real estate walkthroughs.