Caught on Camera
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New technology that allows car number plates to be scanned is predicted to have a wide range of applications in law enforcement, service industries and financial institutions.
A UQ team has created two software bundles that read and display traffic signs and number plates as you drive.
Both systems use a conventional video camera to feed the software which runs under Windows on a Pentium computer.
"It's very easy to put a camera in and take video of traffic, but to get any information out of it at present, you need to have a person watching it," UQ Associate Professor Brian Lovell said.
"But how do you do it without the person?"
Dr Lovell, research director of UQ's Intelligent Real Time Imaging and Sensing Group (IRIS), asked his information technology and engineering students.
He got a range of answers and they tweaked the best methods for what they call an intelligent traffic system. The system finds objects that look like signs from the camera's field of view then matches them from a database.
The plate recognition software pinpoints the plate, then reads and matches the numbers and letters. The software could also be used in toll road fee collection, parking fee collection, traffic control, police enforcement, security and traffic planning.
