Automated License Plate Recognition

[sirwilliam]

VID LINKY

Would you like to know MOAR?

Thought this was pretty cool tech.

[snaab]

This is awesome technology! That's the kinda stuff I like to see.

When registering for FasTrak in Orange County, our version of E-ZPass on the East coast, I had to specify the license plates of the vehicles it would ride in. I don't know if it's the full speed lanes (it is not necessary to slow down at all for the toll plazas) that causes this, but it seems that toll pass misreadings occur frequently. On last months statement, I had three tolls deducted from my account based on license plate alone, despite having the pass with me at all times. Having registered the vehicles under the account, the 47 dollar penalty was not applied, and I was still offered the discounted rate of a toll pass customer.

Now that is having technology work for you.
Plus, adding another vehicle, such as a friends car, can be down instantly online.

[scheherazade]

I used to work on a system like this.
Except it also used lidar to remember the shape of a vehicle.
It would know if it's seen a car with a certain dent more than once (along with plate checks).

It was ~95% accurate...
The 1 in 20 chance of being wrong was actually really bad, since if you drive around and scan 500 vehicles you end up getting 25 mis-matches, which is a lot of manual follow-up.

-scheherazade

[snaab]

Was that for law enforcement purposes, or something else? Automation is amusing.

[scheherazade]

Was that for law enforcement purposes, or something else? Automation is amusing.

The one I worked on was a darpa project "just for kicks". Basically some guy at CMU published some stuff about how you could do X Y Z, and got some other guy at darpa interested. So darpa contracted SAIC, BAE, and UNC to do a phase 1 to see if it would work, then a phase 2 to build a deployable system that would be (phase 3) test-fielded. The idea was to get the marines or army to pick it up. I left the job later in the transition phase (2 -> 3), so I don't know what became of it. However I do know that funding got scarce when the guy in the army that wanted the system (I think) retired, and google bought the company that some of the CMU guys we worked with had.

-scheherazade