ANPR – Number Plate Recognition Technology
July 16, 2008
Recent advances in Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) technologies have lead to a greater acceptance of the technology by car-park operators. The new digital ANPR technologies present greater read rates than traditional CCTV/PC based technologies and offer far greater flexibility in deployment and customization than previously available.
By attaching a unique signature to every vehicle entering and exiting a car park the potential of a car-park management system is greatly enhanced. The signature widely used by vehicle identification technologies is usually the registration number displayed on the front and rear of the vehicle. To robustly read this plate in all weather conditions, day and night and to increase the ability of a system to read dirty plates, Alpha Vision Design has developed a stand alone digital ANPR station that can extract the registration number and automatically present the number for processing.
The applications of ANPR technologies can be used for tolling, police enforcement, journey time analysis, average speed violation and access control. Within the car parking domain, most car park operators use ANPR technology as a medium to locate lost vehicles, to calculate occupancy times and to dramatically decrease the revenue loss associated with ticket fraud.
ANPR is also finding favour within non-supervised car parks as a means to control access via a white list. This white list contains a list of vehicles with known access rights. Suitable for hotel, apartment and company car parks, this negates the use of disposable paper tickets and wireless FOBs. Companies with large fleets are introducing ANPR as a cost effective method of tracking their vehicles throughout their depots. Large supermarkets and chains are also beginning to utilize the information obtained from their car-parks as a way of highlighting demographic patterns with a view to maximizing profits.
For any traffic management system to be a success, the read rate must exceed 99%. Traditionally most operators shied away from ANPR when they discovered that their true read rates were rarely above 60%. In real world applications, this was the limit, not due to poor software but the result of using conventional CCTV systems to obtain the images. CCTV technology is 50 years old and does not lend itself well to computer recognition systems.
The common processing core for CCTV based ANPR systems is a PC. CCTV/PC based systems are not robust and are unacceptably high maintenance. To counter this, Alpha Vision Design has developed a self-contained ANPR system designed specifically for the car parking industry. This system includes an integrated illuminator, high resolution digital camera, digital analyser and on-board relays, all contained in one standard security housing. Only mounting and a power cable is required – an industry first!
A high resolution camera obtains images that are over sixteen times larger in area size than CCTV images. Combined with a wider field of view, now only one camera is required to capture both the registration plate and an overview of the vehicle, and vehicle placement within a lane is no longer an issue which leads to greater capture rates.
The camera /computer unit can in real time adjust the exposure, gain, and the integrated on-board IR lighting to maximise the contrast and readability of the registration plate, including dirty plates, variations in plate reflectivity, strong headlamps and adverse weather conditions. This cannot be done with CCTV/PC based ANPR systems.
The setup is easy and is only required once per site, with no re-configuration necessary even after a power outage as the system will reboot automatically. On a typical 800 bay car-park, the system can also store up to five years of data, capturing and time stamping an image of every vehicle entering and exiting the facility. The system is true Plug & Play and can directly control a parking barrier via its on-board database and integrated relays. For configuration, simply use any standard web browser to manage the ANPR station – no third party software is required to manage the entire ANPR network.
Our standard systems are shipped in three versions. We have an ANPR station designed for operating at a 10 meter and 25 meter range, and a system for high speed traffic applications. All systems are pre configured and only mounting is required. The ANPR stations can act stand alone or integrate with an existing parking entry ticket/gate system. For remote applications, the ANPR station can also be configured to run over GPRS, TCP/IP and WIFI Networks.
Source: http://www.parkingireland.ie
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New Online Car Park Reservation System
July 16, 2008
A dream has now become true also at Berlin-Schönefeld: Going by car to the airport, no stress of looking for a parking lot, a beneficial price, and a short distance to the departure terminal.
Like for the airline companies, where by booking in time you automatically get a chance for a fair-priced ticket, you will now have a possibility to use a beneficial car park in close vicinity to the terminal, by early reservation / booking.
On 1st July 2008, the online car park reservation system has commenced its start-up on the website of Berlins airports, in cooperation with APCOA.
The passenger can now comfortably book a parking lot via Internet on the car parks P1 and P6 as well as in the multi-storey car park P4 of the airport Berlin-Schönefeld and pay in advance. Reservation systems have been used by Scheidt & Bachmann also on other airports like Stuttgart Airport (Germany), Boston Logan Airport (USA) etc. but this new reservation system is more strictly dividing functioning and free design capacity. It is embedded in the own homepage.
Straightforward in dependence on the reservation time and advance booking time, a discount computer integrated in the system guarantees a fair price to the final customer.
During paying in the online portal by credit card, ec/Maestro card or by the PayPal method, the passenger also selects his access medium (credit card or ec/Maestro card). Entry and exit are performed without the ticket by the access medium selected. Paying at the automatic pay station is omitted because the customer gets the voucher on the parking fee posted by E-mail, thanks to the reservation system. All relevant information details such as parking time, parking lot, etc. are derived from the reservation confirmation. The availability of a free parking lot will be ensured by the reservation allotment integrated in the parking system. This is the reason that it may happen that the car park gets the occupation status Full although there might be vacant parking lot. These vacant lots are provided for the reservations.
This shows that early reservation has benefits only: fair prices, attractive offers, no stress of car park search, and a guaranteed vacant parking lot. All of these functions are available to the operator, without any further manual adaptation or acceptance of reservations by phone or fax.
What is the technical method to realize online reservation? By selection of the reservation period, a request is directed to the server of the parking system at the Airport Berlin-Schönefeld, where the basic tariff stored in the system is determined. For every parking period desired, it is possible to leave a certain discount product, which depending on contingency and in consideration of the reservation period, the time of reservation and number of reservations of the customer determines the individual tariff. This reservation system is a platform for car park booking at all locations connected. A special feature of this online system is the freedom of web design. Via the SOAP server interface, the reservation system has been integrated directly into the customers own web site. As there are no other windows opening in the browser, the functioning capacities of advertising banners will be maintained. This reservation feature can be perfectly integrated into the web sites of cooperating partners, as e.g. travel agencies. Additional special conditions can be awarded to these partners via the discount module.
In the back end, the management of the online payment portals is also supplemented by the administration of all reservation master data, as well as all reservations existing in the system. Apart from this, the allotment can be controlled on-site, and the difference counting integrated in the system regularly considers all reservations left in the system, via the dynamic parking lot control. By means of the contingency control it can be determined how many parking lots shall be reserved for future reservations. Thereby limited temporary campaigns to utilize free capacities can be planned and performed via the discount module.
Source: http://www.parking-net.com
Tags: italy, urban parking, china parking websiteRelated Posts:
Yerevan: Facing Lack of Subway Car Parking
July 16, 2008
Today in a discussion session conducted in the Municipality of Yerevan the President of Armenia Serzh Sargsyan was also present. According to the officials the problem number one in our city is the lack of subway car parking even in the central part of the city, reported the press service of the President’s Administration.
During the discussion the president said that the main problem is that cars are parking in wrong territories and places and not the points that there are too many cars in our city. “We should work on this rather seriously and find some solutions,” said the president.
According to the information and public relations department of the Municipality, the director of Italian “Renko” company Giovanni Rubini was also present at the discussion. He said that the representative of Italian Company in Armenia is “Armenian PPP” and as soon as they are authorized to conduct the project they will start constructing sub way car parking first in the squares of Aznavour and Saxarov and then expand the project.
The President said that the construction of those subway car parking is very important to make simple the traffic in Armenia.
Source: http://www.panorama.am
Tags: fireproof, China, EURelated Posts:
London’s priciest car park ‘charges £43 for six hours’
July 16, 2008
Parking in the capital’s most expensive car park will set you back £43 for a six-hour stay, a London newspaper said Monday.
The multi-storey car park on Pavilion Road in Knightsbridge has been named London’s costliest by the Evening Standard. Located walking distance from luxury department store Harrods, the NCP-run facility charges drivers £7.20 an hour.
The paper said the highest hourly rate could be found at the NCP in Berners Street, Bloomsbury, which charges £8 per hour but a mere £33 for six hours.
The survey found that people driving into the capital for a day of shopping are better off parking at the Masterpark on Oxford Street where charges are £5 an hour or £24.50 for six hours.
AA president Edmund King told the Evening Standard the charges were “mind-boggling”, adding that they keep many shoppers out of central London.
Bargain hunters unwilling to walk, cycle or take the Tube or bus, should head for the City of London area car parks, the paper said, with parking at Spitalfields and Smithfield Market a steal at £2 an hour.
Source: http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5i9Q36wTrSbBSwq9jMKc3iJQt1LQQ
Tags: switzerland, Japan, EURelated Posts:
Networked Parking System Alerts Drivers to Free Spots
July 12, 2008
New technologies promise to revolutionize the hunt for a parking spot in big cities like San Francisco. Donald Shoup is along for the ride.
“This fall, San Francisco will test 6,000 of its 24,000 metered parking spaces in the nation’s most ambitious trial of a wireless sensor network that will announce which of the spaces are free at any moment.
Drivers will be alerted to empty parking places either by displays on street signs, or by looking at maps on screens of their smartphones. They may even be able to pay for parking by cellphone, and add to the parking meter from their phones without returning to the car.
Solving the parking mess takes on special significance in San Francisco because two years ago a 19-year-old, Boris Albinder, was stabbed to death during a fight over a parking space.
“If the San Francisco experiment works, no one will have to murder anyone over a parking space,” said Donald Shoup, a professor of urban planning at the University of California, Los Angeles, whose work on the pricing of parking spaces and whether more spaces are good for cities has led to a revolution in ideas about relieving congestion.”
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