Method and Device for Determining the Speed of Travel and Coordinates of Vehicles and Subsequently Identifying Same and Automatically Recording Road Traffic Offences

• US 20130038681A1
• Filed: 08/08/2012
• Published: 02/14/2013
• Est. Priority Date: 02/08/2010
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: OOO Korporazija Stroy Invest Proekt M.
• Original Assignee: Ooo "Sistemy Peredovykh Tekhnologiy"
• Inventors: OSIPOV, Sergey Konstantinovich, MALINKIN, Aleksey Yurievich
• Granted Patent: US 8,830,299 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 348/36
• CPC Class Codes: G08G 1/0175 by photographing vehicles, e.g. when violating traffic rules
• CPC Class Codes: G08G 1/054 photographing overspeeding vehicles

Abstract

The automatic system makes it possible to reduce the probability of error when identifying the vehicle of an offender, increases the length of a speed limit monitoring zone to several hundreds/thousands of meters, and makes it possible to cut expenditure on the construction and maintenance of gantries for the installation of speed limit monitoring devices. A method for the combined processing of signals from a radar and a panoramic video camera is proposed, in which data flows from the video camera and the radar are independently obtained, after which they are compared and data about the speed and coordinates are obtained with little probability of error in identifying the vehicle of an offender. The device for realizing the method comprises a radar with a signal processing module to calculate the speed and distance of all vehicles on a chosen section of road, and a panoramic video camera.

Claims

1. A method for determining the speed and coordinates of vehicles that involves emitting electromagnetic pulses in the direction of vehicles moving along a road section, receiving the pulses reflected from vehicles, calculating the distance and speed of the vehicles through a comparison of the parameters of emitted and received pulses and a comparison of the measured vehicle speed with the maximum allowed speed in the given road section and, in case of a speed violation, generating subsequently a signal to recognize the registration (license) plate of the speed-violating vehicle through the use of a license plate recognition video camera, providing vehicle identification and automatic recording of speed violations, the proposed method is different from other methods in that the pulses are emitted by a radar simultaneously with video recording of the same road section by a panoramic video camera, which is calibrated so that the real coordinates of distances from the video camera to the corresponding sections on the road are assigned to each row element Y_i and to each column element X_i of the video camera matrix. Moreover, the distances and speeds of all the vehicles, which are at the moment within the selected road section hundreds of meters long, are calculated from signals received by the radar;

independently and simultaneously, using a picture captured by the panoramic video camera the coordinates and speeds of the same vehicles, which are in the snapshot, are calculated, whereupon the data streams from the radar and video camera containing the speeds and coordinates of all the vehicles, which are at the moment within the selected road section, are compared, moreover, the data received from the radar are taken to be reliable metrological data on the speeds and coordinates Y_i of the vehicles, while the data received from the panoramic video camera are considered to be reliable metrological data on the coordinates X_i of the same vehicles;

each vehicle violating the speed limit is subsequently monitored until the license plate is recognized, then a license plate recognition video camera generates an image frame of the violating vehicle, which contains the recognized license plate, date, time, recorded speed and video camera identifier, thus allowing automatic recording of traffic violations.

2. A method according to claim 1 characterized in that the data streams containing the speeds and coordinates of all vehicles, which are at the moment within a selected road section, and obtained from radar and panoramic video camera independently of each other are compared, for example, by the correlation method.

3. A device for determining the vehicle speeds and coordinates that consists of a radar, at least one license plate recognition video camera for recording and recognizing the license plates of speed-violating vehicles, and a control and data processing module connected to the radar and the video camera characterized in that the radar includes a signal processing module capable of calculating the speeds and distances of all the vehicles within a selected road section;

moreover the device includes also a panoramic video camera connected to the control and data processing module, which is equipped with software to synchronize the radar and panoramic video camera, compare data streams from the radar and video camera, obtain reliable metrological data on the speeds and coordinates of speed violators, identify the speed violator and transmit data for automatic recording of traffic rule violations.

4. A device according to claim 3 characterized in that the functions of the panoramic video camera and the functions of the license plate recognition video camera are performed by one wide-angle megapixel video camera.

5. A device according to claim 3 characterized in that several standard video cameras are used as the license plate recognition video camera, depending on number of traffic lanes.