Crime Does Pay for Small Robot Research Firm : Security: San Diego concern has found a profitable niche by providing anti-crime surveillance systems for small businesses.

Mike Nolan won’t win any awards for the videos that he shoots at his 7-Eleven convenience store in Encinitas. But the retired U.S. Navy veteran credits his home videos with saving considerable money by deterring light-fingered employees and shoplifters.

A case in point is graveyard shift clerk who, oblivious to an overhead camera, filed off coin box locks on the store’s video games and replaced them with his own locks. The camera produced photographs that authorities subsequently used to win a conviction against the clerk, who was stealing coins from the games.

Larger companies have long used surveillance cameras to detect theft, but technological advances during recent years have produced video cameras and accessories that have turned closed-circuit television into an affordable tool for smaller retail operations, including convenience stores and gasoline stations.

Closed circuit video equipment now accounts for about $500 million of the $2 billion commercial, industrial and institutional security systems market in the U.S., according to industry analysts. Sales of closed-circuit security cameras are growing at a faster rate than the overall security products industry.

One player in the closed-circuit television industry is San Diego-based Robot Research, a small company with 51 employees that hopes to report $6.7 million in revenue for its upcoming fiscal year.

The company, which does not manufacture video cameras, has instead secured its place in the industry by identifying niches where larger companies, such as Sony Corp. and Mitsubishi, “can’t justify development expenses,” according to one industry observer.

Robot Research’s products play integral roles in the system that Nolan uses to monitor activity in and around the convenience store he opened after retiring from the Navy.

Nolan’s cameras are linked to his home through a Robot Research transmission system that sends images over regular telephone lines, eliminating the need for a prohibitively expensive, dedicated video transmission line.

Robot Research also manufactures a device that allows Nolan’s television monitor to accept feeds carried through telephone lines--or a cellular phone--from as many as 16 different cameras. And, it utilizes a black box that splits the television monitor into four “quads,” allowing Nolan to monitor as many as four cameras at the same time.

Nolan said his five-camera set-up at the 7-Eleven in Encinitas was easy to install and is “easier to use than a VCR. . . . I can suck down a beer while watching the baseball game on TV at home, and, once in a while, check in on my store on another monitor.”

Although Nolan installed the camera system as a deterrent, it has also given him peace of mind. “If I wake up in the middle of the night, all I have to do is punch two buttons and dial a telephone number,” Nolan said. That activates the television monitor, and he can select any one of five in-store cameras.

Nolan said the closed-circuit system has cut theft by at least $225 each month, which is what it costs to operate and maintain the system.

Although Nolan lives just blocks from his convenience store, Robot Research’s technology works “cross-town, cross-country or around the world,” said Robot Research President and owner John P. Stahler, who initially joined the company in 1975 as a technician.

Robot Research has benefitted from a general trend in the security industry to increasingly incorporate video equipment into security systems, said Albert Janjigian, owner of STAT Resources Inc., a Brookline, Mass.-based market research firm. During recent years, the closed-circuit television market has grown at about twice the rate of the overall security industry, Janjigian said.

That grown has been driven largely by technological advances and affordability. “Costs have come down, and the value of the equipment has gone up,” Janjigian said. “The equipment tends to be smaller, easier to use and more accessible to a broader audience.”

In the early 1980s, it took several minutes to transmit the equivalent of a still photograph over the telephone lines to a monitor. But Robot Research’s technology has trimmed transmission time for the equivalent of a still photograph to just seconds, and advances in digital technology are expected to soon make “real time” transmission a reality.

Closed circuit security systems are benefitting from the same general technological advances that have made home-video systems more attractive to consumers. Just as home video is driven by ease of use, industrial security applications are being driven by customers want “the ability to do more with less equipment, Janjigian said.

Robot Research, analysts said, allows security-conscious companies to simplify installation and use of closed-circuit systems. “You can transmit multiple signals using their technology, and instead of needing multiple monitoring stations, you can use one monitor to look in on many locations,” Janjigian said.

Robot Research equipment has found its way into several unique applications, including the control room of the infamous Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania and the Space Shuttle.

“In their limited niche markets they’ve done a magnificent job,” said Bob Milecki, an industry consultant and a former sales and marketing executive for a General Electric division that marketed closed-circuit television products. “Robot has made some very good moves, they have got a good name with customers, and they have hired some knowledgeable people as they have grown,” Milecki said.

Robot Research has succeeded by meeting customer needs, observers said, but the company will face technological challenges as the industry matures.

Although most closed-circuit television systems now utilize black-and-white cameras, future sales will be tilted toward color cameras. And, although it now takes two to twenty seconds to transmit a picture over the telephone lines, technological advances soon will make it possible to send “real time” audio and visual signals.

“The industry is exploding,” said Chris Simmons, district sales manager for Instant Replay, a Los Angeles-based company that designs and installs video security systems. “The closed circuit business is really starting to blossom.”