Method for surveilling a tolling system

• US 10,445,592 B2
• Filed: 08/20/2018
• Issued: 10/15/2019
• Est. Priority Date: 08/25/2017
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Kapsch TrafficCom AG (Datax Handelsgmbh)
• Original Assignee: Kapsch TrafficCom AG (Datax Handelsgmbh)
• Inventors: Siegl, Thomas
• Primary Examiner(s): Alcon, Fernando
• Application Number:
  US16/105,216
• Publication Number:
  US 20190065860A1
• Time in Patent Office: 421 Days
• Field of Search: None
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/51 Indexing; Data structures therefor; Storage structures
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/06312 Adjustment or analysis of established resource schedule, e.g. resource or task levelling, or dynamic rescheduling
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/10 Office automation; Time management
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 20/0457 the tickets being sent electronically
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 20/3278 RFID or NFC payments by means of M-devices
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 20/4016 involving fraud or risk level assessment in transaction processing
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 2240/00 Transportation facility access, e.g. fares, tolls or parking
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 50/40 Business processes related to the transportation industry shipping G06Q10/083
• CPC Class Codes: G06V 20/52 Surveillance or monitoring of activities, e.g. for recognising suspicious objects recognising microscopic objects G06V20/69
• CPC Class Codes: G06V 20/54 of traffic, e.g. cars on the road, trains or boats
• CPC Class Codes: G06V 20/625 License plates
• CPC Class Codes: G06V 2201/08 Detecting or categorising vehicles
• CPC Class Codes: G07B 15/063 using wireless information transmission between the vehicle and a fixed station identification of vehicles G08G
• CPC Class Codes: G08G 1/0116 from roadside infrastructure, e.g. beacons
• CPC Class Codes: G08G 1/0129 for creating historical data or processing based on historical data
• CPC Class Codes: G08G 1/0175 by photographing vehicles, e.g. when violating traffic rules
• CPC Class Codes: G08G 1/04 using optical or ultrasonic detectors
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 4/40 for vehicles, e.g. vehicle-to-pedestrians [V2P]
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 84/042 Public Land Mobile systems, e.g. cellular systems

Abstract

Methods for surveilling a tolling system, in which vehicles carry onboard units and travel on a multilane road on which a surveillance station is set up, are described. A picture of each passing vehicle is taken, and the pictures are stored in a database. In each onboard unit, when the vehicle is within a predefined area of the surveillance station, a tolling message is generated and sent via the mobile network to the tolling server. In the database, those pictures whose timestamp matches the timestamp of a tolling message are deleted if the lane information of this tolling message corresponds to the lane identification of this picture.

Claims

1. A method for surveilling a tolling system, in which onboard units carried by vehicles determine their position and communicate tolling information based on the determined positions to a tolling server via a mobile network, the vehicles travelling on a multilane road on which a surveillance station is set up, the method comprising:

in the surveillance station, taking a picture of each vehicle passing on a lane of the multilane road and recording a timestamp of taking the picture and a lane identification of the picture;

in a database, storing the pictures;

in each onboard unit, when the vehicle is within a predefined area of the surveillance station, generating a tolling message which includes a lane information indicative of a lane the vehicle is travelling on and a timestamp of generating the tolling message, and sending said tolling message via the mobile network to the tolling server; and

in the database, deleting those pictures whose timestamp substantially matches the timestamp of a tolling message if the lane information of this tolling message corresponds to the lane identification of this picture.

2. The method according to claim 1, wherein the tolling message comprises a map-matched lane information as the lane information.

3. The method according to claim 1, wherein the tolling message comprises an absolute position with a precision lying within a width of a lane as the lane information.

4. The method according to claim 1, comprising a step of OCR-reading a license plate number from pictures that have not been deleted after a predetermined amount of time after taking.

5. The method according to claim 4, comprising a step of deleting those pictures whose OCR-read license plate number corresponds to a license plate number information included in a tolling message.

6. The method according to claim 4, comprising a step of deleting those pictures whose OCR-read license plate number corresponds to a license plate number information included in a legacy tolling message that was generated by a legacy onboard unit that does not include a lane information in said legacy tolling message.

7. The method according to claim 4, comprising a step of deleting those pictures whose OCR-read license plate number corresponds to an entry in a predefined list.

8. The method according to claim 1, wherein the database is located at the surveillance station.

9. The method according to claim 8, wherein the surveillance station sends picture meta data comprising an identification of the picture, the timestamp of the picture and the lane identification of the picture to the tolling server,

wherein it is the tolling server that determines the pictures to be deleted by comparing the received picture meta data to the received tolling messages, and

wherein the tolling server sends the identifications of the pictures to be deleted to the surveillance station, which deletes the pictures corresponding to the picture identifications received from the tolling server.

10. The method according to claim 8, wherein the tolling server sends at least the lane informations and timestamps of the tolling messages to the surveillance station, and

wherein it is the surveillance station that determines the pictures to be deleted by comparing the received lane informations and timestamps of the tolling messages to the lane identifications and timestamps of the pictures.