Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) refers to the application of advanced technology to manage aspects of traffic and transportation in order to create a safer, more efficient, greener and more responsive transport network.
Modern solutions often encompass AI or Deep Learning solutions to “teach” systems to react more intuitively. Intelligent Traffic Systems (also confusingly referred to as ITS) are one element of ITS but modes of transport beyond just roads are also seeing rapid development.
Automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) systems aren’t new, they’ve been successfully used in parking administration and speed enforcement for a number of years. What is new, however, is the level of intelligence available to these systems. ANPR relies on optical character recognition (OCR) where cameras capture letters and image processing techniques decode the characters one by one.
Improved sensors and processors now allow reading of plates in sub-optimal conditions such as poor lighting or fog. With the miniaturisation of components and advancements in processing power, image processing can now be carried out on the camera at the roadside rather than needing to be transferred to a control centre or to the cloud for further analysis. This means that images can be viewed at near real-time and more timely action taken as a result – for example, at entry points allowing access to authorised vehicles only.
