LotGard - Portable Mobile Plate Recognition System


Whether used for general search support or for mobile parking lot enforcement, automatic license plate identification from a moving vehicle is now possible. In particular, the TDS LotGard portable camera system can be easily attached to any window within the vehicle to identify license plates. LotGard automatically detects, reads and identifies license plates numbers from parked cars while in motion.

Once the plate number has been extracted, several options exist for using it. The concepts of White Lists and Black Lists are implemented in the software application. In simple terms, a white list is a list of vehicles that are allowed and a black list is a list of vehicles that are not allowed. In a closed parking lot situation, the license plate number is compared with a white list of acceptable license plate numbers stored in a database. If This technique allows parking management to quickly identity scofflaws that have parked illegally in restricted parking lots. This technique can be applied to any type of parking lot where the allowed patrons and their license numbers are known.

In another situation, a black list is created that contains vehicles of interest, albeit stolen vehicles or other vehicle groups. Once a license plate number is extracted, it is compared to the black list to identify vehicles of interest.

The system uses a license plate matching software package that is fault tolerant and will quickly locate any license plate that is either an exact match or a near match. This information is presented to the search operator so that a visual confirmation of the plate number can be made.

The system can operate in either of the white list or black list mode. The configuration module allows the user to select the mode of operation. The system has the ability upload and process a black or white list from a memory stick or through a wireless/wired Ethernet connection. Thus the list can be prepared on a desktop PC and transported to the Laptop as necessary.

LANE PROCESSOR

The lane processor is a PC laptop running the Linux operating system with X-Windows as the GUI. A custom syncronization can be implemented to keep the scofflaw list on the laptop up-to-date.

VIOLATION PROCESSING SERVICES

TDS, working with its partner firm Velosum, can provide violation processing services to the user.

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