[sci.electronics] Photo radar enforcement and machine vision

ornitz@kodak.UUCP (barry ornitz) (02/12/88)

In article <17308@glacier.STANFORD.EDU> jbn@glacier.UUCP (John B. Nagle) writes:
>
>     Gadgets like this, although rare in the US, have been around for
>years in Germany and Japan.  But the radar/lidar approach really ought
>to be replaced with a motion vision system which matched the images
>from frame to frame and measured speed in that way.  The major problem
>is that television resolution isn't good enough to read a licence plate
>given a field of view that covers an entire road.  But once HDTV cameras
>become generally available, this problem should go away.  Even without
>HDTV technology, it may be possible to make this work, although it will
>probably take one camera per lane.

A company in Knoxville, TN, [Perceptics] has a contract with the Federal gov-
ernment to provide machine vision systems that will read license plates.  For
the present, this is a low-speed application for reading plates at US borders.
I think their field of view is rather large, but they are having problems
with the different sizes of lettering found on typical license plates.  High
definition solid-state cameras are readily available, the Kodak Megaplus ( ?
not sure about the name - different Kodak division) for example with 1024 x
1024 resolution.  I hope these Perceptics systems are as reliable as the one
we bought.  ;-)
                                             Barry
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| |  / /        | |  Dr. Barry L. Ornitz   UUCP:...!rochester!kodak!ornitz
| | / /         | |  Eastman Kodak Company
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