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The company has conducted numerous traffic studies employing the technology in Maryland, including in Montgomery and Prince George’s counties, concluding what may be obvious to many drivers: Very few people drive the speed limit.

Optotraffic has a contract for red-light enforcement cameras in Edmonston and is negotiating with two other suburban Maryland cities, said J. Marcos Sirota, president and CEO of Sigma Space.

In addition, the company recently obtained a patent for a compact system that uses laser radiation in the form of optical pulses to determine vehicles’ speeds. The new system, which operates with a sensor, can monitor vehicles in several lanes and record only those that actually travel a fixed speed above the limit, Sirota said.

He co-founded Sigma about a decade ago, and has seen it grow from a handful of employees to about 100 now. Revenues grew about 58 percent, to $12.5 million, from 2006 to 2007. The Optotraffic subsidiary formed a few years ago.

‘‘We are using [the new system] already on red-light enforcement and tested it significantly on speed enforcement,” Sirota said. ‘‘Our state-of-the-art detection systems, coupled with high-resolution photo and video systems, ensure the highest exposure and prosecutable rates.”

While the use of enforcement cameras is growing, the increase is not as fast as some would like, said Jonathan Adkins, a spokesman for the Governors Highway Safety Association in Washington, D.C. Many more jurisdictions across the nation use red-light cameras than speed cameras — about 300 to 35, he said.

Red-light cameras have been used in Maryland for years, while Montgomery County became the first jurisdiction in the state to employ speed systems last year. The county recently awarded a contract worth up to $19 million to install and maintain 24 speed-enforcement cameras to Affiliated Computer Services, a Dallas information technology company.

A subcontractor working on that contract is Plexus Communications Group of Baltimore, said Andy Wilson, a spokesman for Affiliated Computer Services.

Several bills have been filed in the legislature this session related to the technology. House Bill 364, filed by House Speaker Michael E. Busch (D-Dist. 30) of Annapolis at the request of Gov. Martin O’Malley (D), would allow speed cameras across the state.

Branching out from space

Sigma Space’s clients include NASA, the U.S. Department of Energy, universities and private businesses. In 2006, Sigma Space Partners, a joint venture between Sigma and Greenbelt aerospace services company Stinger Ghaffarian Technologies, won a five-year, $14.4 million contract from NASA to provide global climate modeling, Earth observations and other services for the agency’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt and Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York City.

Sigma Space is the managing entity in the partnership with SGT. While most of Sigma’s employees work in Maryland, some are in New York.

Sigma Space, which won a NASA award for its products last year, and its partners have developed products such as laser sensors to monitor clouds and pollution and three-dimensional mapping instruments. Its board includes high-profile directors such as Mary Cleave, a former NASA official and astronaut who flew on two space shuttle flights in the 1980s. Cleave joined the board in October, saying in a statement that she was ‘‘very interested” in Sigma Space’s work because ‘‘active optical instruments are the next frontier in understanding our planet, Earth, from space.”

So why did Sigma branch out to traffic monitoring? Primarily because of the desire for more commercial applications, Sirota said.

‘‘Optotraffic was started in response to our looking for spinoffs to the commercial markets,” he said. ‘‘We have other spinoff areas, such as a sensor for the U.S. Department of Agriculture to monitor fruit flies.”