Increasing safety with ALPR

Advanced license plate recognition technology is helping modern cities to protect all types of road users without the need for additional, intrusive infrastructure

Words |Gábor Józsa and Pál Szemere, ARH, Hungary

A buzz phrase of our time is ‘smart city’. What does it really mean? Essentially it’s about making better use of big data.

As an example, consider how tracking the movement of athletes via multiple sensors helps improve their performance. Likewise, multi-sensor traffic monitoring systems have enormous potential power.

Unlike traditional ITS, an automatic license plate recognition (ALPR)-based ITS identifies each passing vehicle, and follows its movement through the city. It does not require RF tags or related infrastructure. ALPR-based traffic information is very precise, yields 21st century route planning, and helps in making strategic decisions.

Creating safer cities

To create safer cities, we need an enforcement system that automatically recognizes hazards that lead to traffic congestion – 100% based on image processing, without any road-intrusive technology. Video analytics measures the length of car lines and waiting time in busy intersections. Gridlock detection helps design and enable better traffic control.

“We have a past, present and future in developing intelligent transport systems,” says László Kis, CEO of ARH, which specializes in ALPR-based solutions, OCR and imaging devices. “ARH has accumulated vast experience in plate recognition. We are globally known as an independent developer of ALPR algorithms. Relying on field-tested experience and in-house know-how, it was a logical move into complex ITS. Our mission is to contribute to the safety and efficiency of high-speed life in the 21st century by giving simple answers to complex traffic problems.”

ARH’s proprietary Carmen is an ALPR engine with a difference: it can be used globally. Besides Latin characters, Carmen reads Cyrillic, Arabic, Chinese and other alphabets. Carmen reads HazMat (hazardous material) codes, as well as UIC railroad codes, container codes and USDOT codes.

ARH’s TrafficSpot is a single-gantry, multilane lane controller middleware that can monitor free-flow/stop-and-go traffic with both doppler and lidar sensors and a set of purpose-made cameras. Benefits include 100% detection rate and 28 predefined vehicle categories.

Take a traffic point’s complex multi-lane monitoring capabilities and compress it into a portable device. ARH’s S1 operates automatically: it collects, stores and forwards data as packages into a database center. S1 reads license plates up to 800m (2,600ft) detecting traffic violations such as speeding, solid-line crossing, wrong-way driving, and improper use of lanes. License plate recognition, ADR code recognition, congestion detection and traffic count – no rival product offers such complex monitoring.

Only the relevant images provided

ARH’s Microcam M402 is an extremely compact dashboard/rooftop camera. A unique preselection algorithm running on board forwards only those image frames

for ALPR that actually contain a vehicle. Combining this feature with ARH’s ALPR engine, Carmen, M402 monitors parked as well as passing vehicles, in urban or highway traffic settings.

Around 100,000 vehicles passing each traffic point means millions of data packages per day in a city. Relational databases cannot handle this and may easily collapse. This much data needs a back-end system specifically designed for the task.

Flexible, robust and super-fast

ARH offers a flexible, robust and super-fast central system to store all records (including images). ARH’s GDS middleware is the heart of any ITS system.

A great, intuitive user interface provides self-check (health-monitoring) and real-time traffic data and statistics – instantly available for parallel queries. Users’ rights and access can be individually configured.

The relevant application areas are numerous, including; video toll enforcement, traffic violation detection, congestion charging, journey-time measurement, identifying wanted vehicles, finding drivers with unpaid parking bills and many others.

ARH offers platform-independent, multi-standard technology, which can work together with other systems. Traffic monitoring and enforcement is a single solution – optimized and flexibly custom-tailored. To recap: ARH offers middleware solutions that can be integrated to any existing intelligent transportation system. Simple answers to complex problems. n

Above : The S1

detects road violations and recognizes license plate details

SIMPLE ANSWERS TO CHALLENGING TRAFFIC PROBLEMS

TRAFFICSPOT®

SINGLE-GANTRY, MULTI LANE, FREEFLOW LANE CONTROLLER S1

PORTABLE, UNMANNED TRAFFIC ENFORCEMENT STATION PARKIT® SYSTEM

COMPLETE ANPR/LPR BASED ACCESS CONTROL SOLUTION M402

POWERFUL ON-BOARD ANPR/LPR IN A MOBILE, IN-VEHICLE CAMERA GLOBESSEY® BACKEND

LIGHTNING FAST DATABASE WITH INTUITIVE, MAP-BASED UI