Vehicle Classification - The Road to Fair Tolling

<p>Toll roads, bridges and tunnels, which motorists must pay a fee to use, bypass busy areas to ease traffic congestion, generate funds for road upkeep and repair, and often provide substantial revenues for governments and private companies. Highly beneficial in the main, toll roads present a unique set of problems associated with the collection of the correct tolls from users.</p><p><b>Toll collection techniques</b></p><p>Toll collection techniques fall into two categories, free flowing where traffic flow is not affected and non-free flowing where vehicles stop or slow to pay the toll. The choice of toll collection technology will have a significant impact on the efficiency of the toll collection process.</p><p><b>Efficient toll collection</b></p><p>Toll collection efficiency compares the amount of toll revenue collected to the cost of collection. The toll road operator wants to ensure that the maximum revenue is collected. Their customers, the motorists, want free flowing traffic and no delays. For the operator these sometimes-conflicting needs have been resolved by favouring toll collection over traffic flow. This is particularly true with non-free flowing systems.</p><p>As traffic density increases the balance changes. Toll collection lanes and booths may struggle to handle peak volumes resulting in reduced revenues and frustrated customers. Automating the toll collection process, so it becomes free flowing, can often be the most cost effective solution. However, free flowing toll collection requires systems that will perform checks an operator finds easy but that present significant technological challenges.</p><p><b>Toll charges based on vehicle type</b></p><p>Most toll charges vary according to vehicle type; the bigger it is the more the driver gets charged. Visually checking the vehicle an operator knows which category a vehicle falls into, whether it has a trailer and which weight band it is likely to fall into. Two vehicles arriving together can be easily distinguished from a single vehicle with a trailer, and a car with a roof box will not be mistaken for a commercial vehicle.</p><p>Automated toll collection depends upon systems that accurately and reliably perform these checks and classifications at high speed. They must perform at night, in poor weather conditions, and must work together with other systems that identify the vehicle so that the correct toll can be collected from the vehicle operator.</p><p><b>Laser-based classification systems</b></p><p>Advances in laser technology and reliability have led to systems that use lasers to generate a 3-dimensional model of each vehicle entering the tolling area. Three lasers mounted as a single unit on a pole at the roadside scan a vehicle as it enters the tolling area at speeds up to 40km/hr. Mounted ten metres from the toll barrier the system has enough time to scan and classify the vehicle before it arrives at the barrier.</p><p><b>Classifies over 99% of vehicles correctly</b></p><p>Smart computer systems enable the system to filter out inaccuracies caused by vehicles varying their speed and even reversing in the classification area. Vehicle separation can be as little as 0.2 metres and the system will determine the vehicle's height, width and number of axles. It is possible to set height, width and axle limits to prevent vehicles large or heavy vehicles accessing the toll way.</p><p>Capable of working with cars and trucks from one to thirty metres long the system can even determine the vehicle's classification before the whole vehicle has passed by its lasers. For road operators, the systems' freestanding construction means no in-road loops or sensors, reducing installation costs and disruption.</p><p>Laser systems can achieve a classification accuracy of better than 99% in all weather conditions and classify more than one million vehicles daily in a free flowing traffic situation.</p><p><b>ANPR systems</b></p><p>To maximize the benefits of automatic vehicle classification during toll road charging, a system of vehicle recognition is required. Reading vehicle number plates is of course the accepted method. Again, such systems must be reliable, able to differentiate number plates in poor weather conditions and with very high levels of accuracy. Free flowing traffic systems will want systems that can work across multiple lanes and deal with the problems of tailgaters and toll evaders.</p><p>Good ANPR systems use high-resolution cameras, triggered by a special laser detection sensor (LIDAR), to capture images of passing vehicles' number plates. They interpret these images using computer algorithms and optical character recognition (OCR) techniques. ANPR systems like these reliably identify national and international license plates on multiple parallel lanes, irrespective of the speed or the position of vehicles. Even during poor weather, strong sunlight or snow, they read most license plates correctly.</p><p>Good ANPR systems operate with only one gantry per location and require no roadside installations, meaning they can be constructed in a short time and without significantly disturbing traffic flow. Having classified the vehicle using the 3D laser-dimensioning device, and captured its number plate and an image of the driver, the toll road operator now has the means of charging for the road's use without necessarily stopping the vehicle to collect payment. ANPR systems will work with on board dedicated short-range communication (DSRC) units, which confirm that the vehicle details are valid</p><p><b>A complete freeflow toll collection system</b></p><p>Combining systems such as these gives the toll road operator a means of introducing a freeflow toll collection system that will enable them to meet the demands of their customers: Free flowing traffic that is not delayed by the toll collection, thereby loosing one of the key benefits of the toll system.</p><p>Malcolm Smith is the UK Sales Manager at Vitronic. Vitronic is a leading supplier of machine vision systems. A global company, it provides advanced technological solutions to toll providers. These include ANPR systems, and automated vehicle classification systems.</p><p>For more information visit: <a target="_new" href="http://www.vitronic.com" rel="nofollow">http://www.vitronic.com</a>.</p>

The Great Lakes Region

The Great Lakes region is composed of some cities from US and Canada. It is surrounded by a wide shoreline and contributes greatly in technology and agriculture.
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<br>The region of Great Lakes includes a large portion of a province in Ontario, Canada. It also includes eight states in the USA. These US states border Great Lakes and they are New York, Ohio, Indiana, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Michigan. The whole Great Lake portion of the Canadian shoreline is found in Ontario. The consequent geographical definition of the Great Lakes region is the terrain area that consumes into the said region.
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<br>Great Lakes are distinguished for its significant contributions in the field of political economy, culture, technology, and natural resources. Among the prominent contributions are the democratic economy and government. In addition, industrial production and inventions for automobile manufacturing, agricultural machinery, transportation, as well as commercial architecture are considered its most prominent contributions.
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<br>Lakes hold over a fifth portion of the surface freshwater in the world. This region has a huge number of mineral deposits like iron ore especially in the Mesabi Range of Minnesota as well as in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. Moreover, southern Illinois and western Pennsylvania is rich in anthracite coal, also a valuable mineral deposit. The significant abundance of coal and iron provided the most basic materials for the largest steel production in the world during the late 19th century to early 20th century.
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<br>The soil here is very rich and produces large quantities of corn and cereals. The first major "oil boom" in the world was hosted by Pennsylvania. The wild rice of Minnesota and the cranberry bogs of Wisconsin continue to yield natural rations, which were introduced by the Indians to some Europeans during the 17th century.
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<br>In terms of technology, the region of Great Lakes is home to various globally prominent breakthroughs in the field of agriculture. Some of the most memorable contributions on technology include Cyrus McCormick's mechanical reaper, grain elevator and the steel plow by John Deere. The University of Chicago and the Case Western Reserve University are important sites when referring to early researches about nuclear power.
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<br>In Indiana and Ohio, automobile manufacturing was introduced. Automobile manufacturing was centered in Michigan's Detroit Area. The movable assembly line of Henry Ford became a mark in steel industrial engineering, meat processing, and agricultural machinery manufacturing. The engineering of steel helped in revolutionizing the modern age of mass production build up. Two Chicago-based companies namely Sears Roebuck and Montgomery Ward balanced mass manufacturers with a mass detail form of distribution.
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<br>The contribution in modern transportation includes the early airplanes of the Wright Brothers. Other popular contributions are the Great Lake Freighters as well as railroad beds made of steel rails and wooden ties. The 19th century Erie Canal as well as the 20th century St. Lawrence Seaway had expanded the engineering scale for a gigantic water-born cargo.
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<br>Even prior to European immigration, this region has a well-established political economy. The Indians had traded with each other via the broad network of rivers, portages, and lakes that holds goods in the Mexican Gulf as well as in both the coasts of North America. Major exports in the region include western Pennsylvania's natural oil, copper from the shorelines and islands near Sault Ste. Marie, pipestones of Minnesota, dried cranberries and wild rice from Wisconsin.
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<br>Since the industrial revolution, this region had been the center for industry. Numerous American and Canadian companies are headquartered all over the area.
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<br>About the Author: For more information on <a href="http://www.greatlakesnorthamerica.com/great-bear-lake.html" rel="nofollow">Great Bear Lake</a> and <a href="http://www.greatlakesnorthamerica.com/greatlakeattraction.html" rel="nofollow">Great Lakes Attraction</a>.Please visit our website.
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How Easy it is to View Porn?

<p>Walk into your office turn on the lights sit down at your desk turn on your computer and do a search for any type of pornography. All this will take you in the region of five minutes and you will then have on limited access to all types of photography, this is how easy it is. All pornography sites advertise free material in order to attract customers to join on a full-time basis, I suppose this is like many other products that are sold on the Internet where free stuff is given away in order to introduce the company and what is on offer. However the problem with doing this in the context of selling pornography we are being pushed into the sites are very often not easy looking for them. It is also extremely easy to see what is on offer quiet at the same time it is almost them possible to control who has access to these particular sites.</p><p>A lot of sites do ask the question are you over 18 but that is about as far as the controls go, once you are past this page then you have access to hundreds of sample material of what sites have on offer. Pornography is one of the phenomenon's of the Internet and how it has grown over the years, the problem with most products that we don't want our kids to give access to is that pornography is big business. It is a business is growing every single year and the Internet is a medium that has helped to grow this industry like never thought it would. One of the downsides of this is the easy access to pornography no matter where we are all one needs is an Internet connection and away they go, that said there seems to be a huge appetite in the public domain for this type of material which is a question for another day.</p><p>In spite of increasing restrictions placed on Internet for employees at work it seems that viewing porn is not going to go away. One would think that in a recession the times that in an atmosphere where one needs to work harder in order to hold on to their job that viewing porn would be an absolute no-no. While it is too early to say whether or not viewing porn is decreasing because of the economic climate it is safe to say that it's still exists and if it exists under an atmosphere like the race today than it is unlikely that it will ever be gone forever. A lot of employees say that ending up on inappropriate sites is accidental and this can easily happen however there is far too much at activity on porn sites for this to explain why it happens. People view porn at work mainly for the thrill of it but also because something that the younger generation is growing up with because of the easy access to porn every day. Parents that don't watch what they are children are watching on the Internet make it easy for kids to watch porn and as this practice continues over time it becomes the norm for people to watch property on the Internet.</p><p>This article was written by Fegal Tully of Pixalert - <a target="_new" href="http://www.pixalert.com" rel="nofollow">http://www.pixalert.com</a> <br><a target="_new" href="http://www.pixalert.com" rel="nofollow">Stop Porn</a>. PixAlert is the market leader in products and services that provide detection of critical data for corporations.</p>