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Introduction to VIDAR tecnology (Video Detection and Ranging)

Dr. Ferran Lisa-Mingo
Ph.D. in Computer Engineering
Imagsa Technologies S.A.

Summary
In this article we will review the evolution of speed enforcement systems for traffic, and
will introduce the VIDAR technology (Video Detection And Ranging). We will point out the
advantages and drawbacks of every technological approach and will conclude with the ideal
caracteristics for these systems, assuming extreme weather conditions and high traffic density.
The VIDAR approach will be proposed as the future altrenative for emerging economies.

1. Introduction.
It is known that circulation speed is one of the first factors to control in order to improve road
safety. Although it is necesary to invest in infrastructure (better highways and road signs), and
continually upgrade the vehicle parks (safer vehicles), the adequation of the speed to the road
conditions will always be a key element for safety. The speed excess reduces the capacity to
avoid obstacles and follow the angles of the road. Speed extends the distance necesary to stop
the vehicle, and increases the distance required to avoid an obstacle on the road.
Among the many studies that validate the gravity of speeding, we refer the reader to the
report An Analysis of Speeding Related Crashes published by the Department of Transport of
the United States of America. It shows how between 2001 and 2007 over 31% of all fatal
accidents in the USA were related to excesive speed, with an estimated anual cost above
40.000 millon dollars.
Unfortunately, speeding is higly dependant on the habits of the drivers and requires a large
effort on colective discipline. The experience from the most advanced countries in road safety
demonstrates that this effort is only obtained through campaigns of speed enforcement and
policing the roads.
In this paper we review the different techniques to control traffic speed and introduce VIDAR
technology, developed to overcome the limitations of other aproaches. Section 2 summarizes
the traditional methods for measuring speed, to analyze its limitations in section 3 and discuse
what would be the desirable characteristics in an "ideal" enforcement solution. Section 4
introduces VIDAR technology, and section 5 gives a complete description of the product
"Chronos'Spot". The article ends with a final section of conclusions.

IMAGSA TECHNOLOGIES S.A.

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2. Reviewing speed control systems.

There are two types of measures of vehicle speed: the spot speed at a control point, and the
average speed in a control section.
2.1. Spot Speed Enforcement
The technology most used to measure instantaneous speed is the RADAR (Radio Detection and
Ranging). It is based on the "doppler" effect: the speedometer emits a microwave signal with a
known frequency that bounces off a moving object back to the sender with an increased
frequency proportional to the speed of the object.
After calibrating the received frequency measurement, a radar is able to obtain accurately the
speed of a moving object on the road. However, one limitation on this technique occurs when
multiple vehicles are moving in front of the radar. For example, a common rule rejects
sanctions from a radar when more than one vehicle appears in the picture (you can not be
sure which one is the offender).
A newer device that does not suffer from this problem is the LIDAR (Laser Detection And
Ranging). In this case, use a similar principle but emitting a pulsed beam of laser light which,
being highly directional, shows clearly which is the speeding vehicle. The most used LIDAR
equipment is the well known "laser gun" that should be targeted to the suspicious vehicle by a
police agent.
A completelly different speed enforcement approach uses two sensors that detect the passage
of vehicles through two close points. As illustrated in Figure 5, these sensors typically detect
when the vehicle crosses a horizontal strip sensitive to weight (piezo-electric sensors), to the
mass of metal (inductive sensors) or the height (barriers of infrared sensors).

Figure 1. Buried vehicle detectors

Inductive or piezoelectric sensors are installed under the asphalt, which is very inconvenient
because they must be replaced every time the asphalt repairs. Sensors detecting the vehicle
height are installed in gantries, so you do not have this problem, but they require an expensive
infrastructure not always available.

IMAGSA TECHNOLOGIES S.A.

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CIF: A64065055

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The output of this sensor pair is captured and analyzed by a computer that determines the
time the vehicle takes to travel the distance between them. Having an accurate measure of the
distance between the sensors, the computer measures the vehicle speed.
A final device used to measure speed is a pair of infrared transmitter and receiver units in the
sides of the road. A vehicle that passes between these devices is detected by cut of infrared
beams, and the time between the two detections allows measuring the speed speed. This last
approach is not suited for multilane roads.

TX

RX

Figure 2. Speed measurement with Infrared barrier.

2.2. Average Speed Enforcement

Taking a picture of a vehicle with two points of their journey, and knowing exactly what time
the photo was taken, it is very easy to calculate the average speed of the vehicle if we have an
accurate measurement of the distance between the two points.
As illustrated below, this principle can have significant errors when the two points are very
close because lane changes add significant distance to travel time

Figure 3. Average Speed measurement

This limitation makes average speed enforcement solutions be used only over long distances of
hundreds of meters or even several kilometers, so it is mainly used in long road sections with
no entries or exits.

IMAGSA TECHNOLOGIES S.A.

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Tel. +34 934.869.345

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Although the laws for average speed enforcement are relatively recent, is carried practicing
since ago years with manual means. These are the known "speed traps" in which two or more
agents manually capture images of vehicles at various checkpoints and then study their travel
time. It is also known that in some country drivers have been punished for taking a vehicle very
little between two tolls on a highway.
Average speed enforcement appear limited to roads, and therefore are not applicable in the
majority of points where speed control is critical (ex. all urban areas, where the presence of
pedestrians maximizes the danger of speeding). Nevertheless, these solutions have some
benefits over traditional spot speed enforcement.
In all spot speed enforcement solutions identifying the vehicle in an image is a must to issue a
fine, so the quality of the image is key to the peformance of the solution. Since average speed
enforcement starts from images, using high performance ANPR technology, the vehicle
identifiaction is probably better (it actually requires identifying the vehicle twice so there is
half the chances of mistaking).
A second advantage is that the instantaneous velocity meters may be located by the
conductors through the use of detectors. These devices cause the drivers to brake dangerously
to avoid punishment, producing more accidents.
Some advocates also suggest that average speed enforcement is more "fair" because
traditional spot speed enforcement doesnt make any difference between drivers who
exceeded for a short snippet of his way (perhaps by distraction) and those who continually
ignore the limits speed.

3. Towards an optimum system for speed control

From the discussion in the previous point, we can conclude that all technologies for speed
control have some drawback or limitation. In this section we will review them and guess how
and ideal solution would be.
Intrusive systems using electromagnetic coils or piezzoelectric sensors are progressively being
replaced by other non-intrusive technologies. This is because experience shows that
mainteinance of technologies buried under the asphalt is always very expensive, both in the
cost of the work needed on the road, as the impact on traffic flow.
The non-intrusive sensors such as radar or lidar are generally preferred by the market, but
generally suffer from other limitations: they are active elements that emit some kind of
radiation on the track, and thus are detectable by the drivers. A driver detects a radar often
becomes a danger to other drivers when braking sharply to avoid the fine.
As indicated in the following table, an "ideal" speed control should be passive and nonintrusive.

IMAGSA TECHNOLOGIES S.A.

C/Navas de Tolosa 270, 5 5

Tel. +34 934.869.345

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CIF: A64065055

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INTRUSIVE

RADAR
LIDAR

ACTIVE

PASIVE

NON INTRUSIVE

Inductive Sensors
Piezo-electric Sensors

OPTIMUM

Figure 4. Classification of Speed Control Technologies

All technologies of automatic speed control require a picture to identify unambiguously the
offending vehicle. The most precise speed measuring technology is useless without an image
with quality enough to read the license plate. If the picture does not clearly show the vehicle,
or shows more than one vehicle without a clear indication of which is the offending one, that
information can not be processed.
Although automatic license plate reading systems have evolved tremendously in recent years,
few non-intrusive systems are able to read license plates of vehicles traveling at high speed.
And the few who are able to do so are in general very sensitive to enviromental conditions.
On one hand, the outdoor lighting is totally uncontrollable so license plate reading is
dramatically affected by glare and shadows. Furthermore, although countries generally try to
standardize license plates in its vehicle fleet, the reality is that every single plate reflects light
differently because of the different degrees of dirt and conservation status.

Figure 4. Two vehicles taken in a scene on the same road at the same time cannot be captured with the same
parameters. Methods of adaptive multi-exposition are required to get optimum images for ANPR.

To achieve a system that suits this variability, ANPR system manufacturers use multi-exposure
techniques. These techniques involve performing multiple shots of the vehicle with different
settings and selecting the best one for the application.

IMAGSA TECHNOLOGIES S.A.

C/Navas de Tolosa 270, 5 5

Tel. +34 934.869.345

www.imagsa.com

CIF: A64065055

08027 Barcelona SPAIN

Fax. +34 934.856.776

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In many cases the speed limit on a road is different for different types of vehicles (for example,
light vehicles can run more than heavies). This means that the image must not only identify the
vehicle, but also should allow vehicle classification.
We can conclude that the most accurate technology to measure speed is totally useless if not
accompanied by appropriate elements to capture and analyze images. The ideal system of
speed enforcement must have the following features:

It should not be intrusive.

It should be passive.
It should include automatic license plate reading with multi-exposure.
It should be able to tell the speed of each vehicle at the scene.
It should be able to automatically classify the vehicles.

4. Introdution to VIDAR technology.

The technology broaldy known as VIDAR (Video Detection And Ranging) emerged from the
obervation that automatic speed enforcement requires the best ANPR performance (vehicles
travelling at the highest speed under any environmental condition). Extending image
resolution and frame rate is the way to improve ANPR performance and, as we will see later, is
the basis for precise speed measurement.
To analyze the speed of vehicles from video is essential to have at least two images of every
vehicle, knowing with precission the time where those images where exposed, and guessing
the movement of vehicles in real world from its movement in the images. VIDAR technology
uses stereoscopic analysis to compute a 3D position (x,y,z) from 2D pictures captured by two
different image sensors. These image sensors are asemblied in a single body, and factory
calibrated to compute real world positions from the relation between bidimensional
coordinates in the two images.
Stereoscopic vision uses mathematical techniques, widelly used for many years in projective
geometry, to locate the 3D position of a given object. The concept is straight-forward: objects
detected in the scene are matched between the two images in a stereo pair, to decide their 3D
position using projective geometry. Every object in the scene has features such as corners or
edges that ease its matching, and projective geometry allows computing the distance between
the camera and those features in the 3D world.
Having the distances between the camera and the objects in the scene, it is easy to compute
its average speed traking the objects in time. If we repeat this process very fast, many times
per second, we can conclude that the spot speed of every object is equal to the average speed
in the short travel between two consecutive image pairs. With a very precise measurement of
time (easy to achieve with modern electronics) the precission of this speed measurement

IMAGSA TECHNOLOGIES S.A.

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technique is only related to the precission of distance computation, that mostly depends on
the resolution of images.
A good VIDAR solution must be non-intrusive, and cant use any external vehicle detector
telling the system when a vehicle is present in the scene, so it must analyze a continuous high
speed and high resolution video to check every single vehicle passing through. This check
should carry on the detection of vehicles, its identification through license plate recognition
and the measurement of its speed through 3D tracking.
To allow the privacy of drivers, the product must include the option to transfer data of just
offending vehicles, maybe through some encrypted protocol. But this new approach to peed
enforcement also has the potential to be combined with many other ANPR-related
applications on non-speeding vehicles, from black-list checking to travel time control.

5. ChronosSpot system
Imagsa Technologies Inc. is a high-tech company founded in 2006 to develop high-speed
intelligent cameras. It is a pioneer in the use of massive parallelism to analyze 270 images per
second with 2048 1024pixeles resolution (2 megapixel).
The Chronos'Spot stereoscopic vision system combines two of these smart cameras to capture
and analyze a total of 1080 megapixels per second.

Figure 5. ChronosSpot smart camera

This huge volume of data is processed in a processor custom-designed for license plate
recognition. This processor uses massive parallelism to measure the speed of all vehicles that
go through a path of up to 7m wide, allowing speed control in two lanes even when several
vehicles travel in parallel. A very clear example of the benefit of this technology is the
measurement of the speed of motorcycles, typically running between lanes.
The equipment is completely non-intrusive and requires no other sensor to function. Although
it includes an infrared illuminator to work at night, during the day it uses sunlight which makes
it a totally passive device undetectable by drivers.

IMAGSA TECHNOLOGIES S.A.

C/Navas de Tolosa 270, 5 5

Tel. +34 934.869.345

www.imagsa.com

CIF: A64065055

08027 Barcelona SPAIN

Fax. +34 934.856.776

info@imagsa.com

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Besides speed measurement is capable of reading license plates and classifying vehicles, and it
can optionally include a third camera for color overview of the road.
The product includes an SDK that allows system integrators to develop software for the control
center (issuing of fines, generation of statistics, etc.).
The following figures show the sample program that comes with the SDK, and list the main
features and functions of ChronosSpot.

Figure 6. Working Examples of Chronos Spot

IMAGSA TECHNOLOGIES S.A.

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Tel. +34 934.869.345

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Main features of ChronosSpot

All-in-one product easy to install, both on a gantry over the track or on a pole in the roadside.
2 Megapixel images with the optimal format for two lane analysis (2048 x 1024 pixel).
Image capture using two high-speed image sensors: 270 frames per second in each sensor, obtaining
a total of 1080 Megapixels per second.
Embedded GPS to stamp in every image the time when it was captured and the location of the
camera. Internal clock is resynchronized every second with atomic clock in satellites, allowing an
error under 10 microseconds (100 times more accurate than standard computers).
Real-time analysis of all captured images using massive parallel processor, and temporary storage in
a high-speed circular buffer for up to 256 images (0.95 seconds).
Dual-core Atom processor for high-level operations (OCR, encryption, communication protocols, etc).
High capacity solid state disk (up to 600 Gbytes).
Infrared illuminators easily detachable from the camera. Up to 4 illuminator units can be installed at
any distance from the camera, to allow good overview images of vehicles with retro-reflective license
plates.
Optional color overview camera with resolution on request. This camera generates color pictures and
video as documentary evidence of offending vehicles.

Default funcionalities.

Optional funcionalities

Vehicle detection.

Vehicle classification

Speed measurement with 99% accuracy.

Detection of vehicles without license plate

License plate Reading with 95% reliability.

Detection of special vehicles (i.e. vehicles with

dangerous goods)

Generation of a configurable number of

monochrome images of the offending vehicles.

Detection of wanted vehicles (ability to manage

any number of white and black lists)

Generation MJPEG monochrome video.

Generation of H264 Color video

Local data storage management.

Detection of stop-sign jumping

Communication protocol with asymmetric

encryption (event-based protocol to optimize
network bandwidth).

Detection of red-light jumping

IMAGSA TECHNOLOGIES S.A.

C/Navas de Tolosa 270, 5 5

Tel. +34 934.869.345

www.imagsa.com

CIF: A64065055

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6. Conclussions
VIDAR technology overcomes most limitations of previous speed enfocement systems. It is a
non-intrusive and pasive technology for multi-lane speed enforcement with 99% accuracy, also
capable of other usefull ANPR applications in the same installation.
Chronos'Spot product developed by Imagsa manages all these functions with maximum
efficiency and a very moderate cost through the use of massive parallelism built into a custom
designed integrated circuit.

IMAGSA TECHNOLOGIES S.A.

C/Navas de Tolosa 270, 5 5

Tel. +34 934.869.345

www.imagsa.com

CIF: A64065055

08027 Barcelona SPAIN

Fax. +34 934.856.776

info@imagsa.com

INNOVATIONS IN DEVELOPMENT

ViDAR (Visual Detection and Ranging)

Insitus maritime search compliment to high-resolution imagery
Insitu is now able to search, detect, and cue our platform
sensors to find unknown objects over vast areas of water.

Operational Capability and Benefits

Enables wide-area maritime search When equipped with ViDAR, ScanEagle can search a
20-nautical-mile-wide swath of water and detect objects that traditional maritime search
sensors often miss, such as low-profile semi-submersibles, marine mammals, and humans.
Covers larger areas than traditional methods Using ViDAR and an existing turret,
ScanEagle can search an approximately 13,360 square nautical mile area in 12 hours.
Pairs target detection with identification With the ability to detect, track, and cross cue
sensors to multiple targets, ViDAR is able to use the existing ScanEagle primary sensor suite to
positively identify maritime target detections.
Ranks object detections Distinguishes between water and objects based on pixel sensitivity,
making it easier for the operator to rapidly locate, track, and catalog multiple objects of interest.

ViDAR Launching

ViDAR

PROJECT ROADMAP:

In 2010 Insitu Pacific successfully deployed Kestrel land from Sentient Vision Systems (SVS) to
find moving objects in Afghanistan.
In 2011, SVS introduced a maritime version of Kestrel.
In 2013, initial development began to integrate Kestrel maritime into a small sensor package
capable of being hosted on ScanEagle.
In Q4 2015, Insitu, Hood Tech Corp. and SVS conducted successful maritime search, detect,
and classify flight operations using a ViDAR-equipped ScanEagle for the Royal Australian Navy.
Further development will focus on payload integration within Insitu GCS and information
processing software, and utilization of an IR sensor for nighttime search capability.

Transporting ViDAR

ViDAR User Interface

2013
Initial development for
UAS integration begins

2015
Successful maritime search, detect and
classify flight operations conducted
Insitu Inc. Distribution Unlimited 010716