Australian road-safety company Haltivision has become the first adopter of Q-Free’s Intrada Cloud automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) service, integrating it into its solar-powered roadside platform so that plate recognition takes place in the cloud rather than on dedicated hardware at each roadside location.
Under the arrangement, captured vehicle images are submitted securely through an application programming interface (API), and vehicle identification data is returned directly to the connected application. Haltivision has integrated and tested the service within its intelligent roadside technology platform.
What Intrada Cloud returns
Intrada Cloud returns vehicle registration information together with country and state-of-origin data. Additional vehicle characteristics, including make, model and colour, can also be incorporated depending on application requirements.
The integration combines Haltivision’s roadside detection and evidence-capture capabilities with Q-Free’s image recognition technology. This creates the option of identifying vehicles associated with road-safety and compliance events that the Haltivision systems have detected.
“Our focus at Haltivision is on making sophisticated road-safety technology easier and faster to deploy,” says Fergus Porter, chief executive officer of Haltivision. “Q-Free has a highly regarded recognition engine, and making that capability available as a cloud service changes the way companies such as ours can integrate ANPR into new applications.”
Flexible deployment without ANPR infrastructure
“Instead of designing an entire deployment around dedicated ANPR infrastructure, we can access the recognition capability when and where it is required,” Porter explains. “That gives us greater flexibility as we develop new road-safety and enforcement applications.”
According to Dr Marco Sinnema, vice-president of image review solutions at Q-Free, the Haltivision integration demonstrates the potential of delivering Q-Free’s recognition technology through a cloud-based consumption model.
“For decades, Q-Free has helped transportation authorities identify vehicles accurately and reliably,” Sinnema says. “Intrada Cloud allows us to extend that expertise to an even broader range of applications through a flexible, cloud-based service. Haltivision is a great example of how technology partners can build on our proven recognition capabilities to develop innovative solutions for road safety.”
Solar-powered, AI-enabled roadside systems
Haltivision develops solar-powered, connected and AI-enabled roadside systems designed for rapid deployment across metropolitan, regional and remote environments. The systems can detect road-user behaviour at the roadside, identify events requiring further assessment and create digital evidence packages for subsequent processing.
The company says the technology is intended to give authorities objective data and evidence on unsafe road-user behaviour without the complexity of traditional fixed roadside infrastructure. Adding cloud-based ANPR allows vehicle identification to be associated with detected events where appropriate, supporting applications across road safety, traffic compliance and intelligent transportation.
“There is a natural fit between the two technologies,” Porter adds. “Haltivision is focused on identifying what is happening on the road, while Q-Free brings decades of expertise in identifying the vehicle involved. Bringing those capabilities together creates some very interesting possibilities.”
