Vision system acts as electronic police for traffic violations in China

Oct. 4, 2013
As a result of increasing traffic injuries and fatalities on the roads, Chinese government officials have created the "electronic police" automated vision system, which features Basler cameras, to capture images of vehicles that do not adhere to local traffic laws.

As a result of increasing injuries and deaths from aggressive and disobedient driving on Chinese roads, local government installed an automation vision system called the "electronic police," which monitors and detects when a driver fails to stop at a red light traffic signal.

In 2004, the Chinese adopted the Road Traffic Safety Law, which was an effort to improve the number of traffic fatalities by enforcing and monitoring driver and vehicle behavior on the roadways. While this improved the numbers slightly, the need to make roads safer was still quite large. As a result, the electronic police system was installed. This automated vision system uses Basler Pilot 5MPixel cameras to capture images of vehicles that do not adhere to local laws.

Basler Pilot cameras features Sony ICX625 2/3" CCD image sensors, 3.45 µm x 3.45 µm pixel size, a frame rate of 17 fps, and a GigE interface, which allows for cable lengths of up to 100m and data rates of up to 100 MByte/s. Basler’s cameras feature a customized filter and special firmware which solve the issue of red color appearing orange in images. In addition, continuous white balance provides for color accuracy for images taken during the day, or at night.

Sensors in the ground detect whether or not a car makes a complete stop at the marked stop line, and if it does not, the cameras, which use a Pentax lens, capture images of the car and license plate. Image data is then forwarded to a computer running an automatic number plate recognition algorithm. From there, the result is sent to the responsible police department and the owner and the driver of the vehicle are identified and enforcement is carried out.

View more information on Basler Pilot cameras.
View the Basler case study

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About the Author

James Carroll

Former VSD Editor James Carroll joined the team 2013.  Carroll covered machine vision and imaging from numerous angles, including application stories, industry news, market updates, and new products. In addition to writing and editing articles, Carroll managed the Innovators Awards program and webcasts.

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