Neural Labs complete ecosystem for smart cities

In Neural Labs we've specialized on technology solutions based on video analysis applied on vehicles that offer fast and noticeable results to reduce the accident rates and improve the urban environment mobility, becoming a useful and essential tool in the cities we operate in. 

In this environment we can offer solutions both in security and traffic or mobility areas.

Our 20 years' experience in video analysis applied to traffic has given us experience in all kind of environments and a wide knowledge on the different issues that happen on a municipality or city.

One of the main priorities a city or Smart city must have is being able to guarantee its citizen safety: that's the foundation of a humane, organized and modern city.

This safety can be even greater via the detection of potentially dangerous vehicles (terrorism, delinquency, etc.) or by guaranteeing the respect of circulation rules, such as traffic lights, for example. 

Bellow I enumerate some of our solution's applications in three urban environment areas.

Security

It's vital for a municipality's security to detect early the vehicles involved on crimes or potentially suspicious of committing offences.

The objective is always to avoid deaths, damages to people or to properties, etc. 

Through license plate recognition (LPR) cameras installation, in fixed points or mobile units — like police cars —, all the detected information gets checked against interest lists like, for example:

• Stolen vehicles
• Vehicles with arrest order
• Technical files from government vehicle databases 

Furthermore, Neural Labs offers additional analytics that can provide greater intelligence to the system, like, for example:

• Colour detection
• Make detection
• Speed detection
• Vehicle classification detection

Our technology's high recognition rate allows clients to check against those lists practically 100% of the vehicles circulating in front of our license plate recognition cameras and to store all the detected information on each vehicle on the cities' databases.

Early alerts

In a security environment the first alert is the detection of a license plate appearing on "interest" lists (municipal, state-wide or federal). This alert allows to activate the appropriate police actions.

Another alert that can be extremely useful to avoid a possible crime is the fact that a license plate doesn't match the colour, make or vehicle classification detected by Neural Labs video analysis with the vehicle's technical data included in the government records. 

This discrepancy could indicate that the license plate is cloned, and is very likely to have an intention to commit an offense. 

Forensic search

Having stored the number plates of all the vehicles that circulate in front of the cameras, as well as some additional vehicle's data like make, colour, classification, etc., the security agents can use that information to investigate crimes, incidents, etc.

The simpler application is to search in the historical database the appearances of a complete or partial license plate, to be able to identify dates and places where that car was seen.

That tracing is already extremely useful as it allows to have a starting point from which to follow the suspect's "story", using license plate recognition cameras or linking them with video recordings of the city or municipality.

Nevertheless, if we cross the search with the vehicle characteristics detected by Neural Labs' traffic analysis like colour, make and car classification etc. this turns out to be much more precise reducing the list of suspects to investigate and optimizing the system. 

Search matching vehicles characteristics.

An example of this cross-browsing functionality could be to search in the database vehicles detected with the following vehicle data combination that matches a crime suspect's information:

License plate includes: “FGB12”

Colour: Red

Make: Renault

Classification: Car

Dates: between 01-03-2018 and 21-03-2018

Detection Area: Old town

When this data has been introduced, Neural Labs' Back Office will locate the detected vehicle that meet this criteria and will show all the detections with the associated images and videos for a better verification.

Vehicle included on a detection list alert.

The deterrent effect these systems have is clear to everyone and, therefore, cities become safer for its inhabitants thanks to the adoption of this technology.

These systems installation is in line with making smarter and more autonomous vigilance systems, being a great support for the security personnel and video operators. Facial recognition is another of the analytics that Neural Labs' solutions coexist with.

Traffic

 

Early alerts

In the city and municipality traffic management area, our solutions are useful to avoid driving behaviours that are a threat to the rest of the citizens. We aim to, once more, avoid deaths and damages through the deterrent by the application of the corresponding sanctions.

In this environment, it can be interesting to look for, in real time, all the license plates detected on several entities' lists. In this case, in a department oriented to traffic it is useful, for example, to access to vehicles without compulsory insurance's list or without the compulsory technical inspection. 

 

Vehicle access control

Some cities also limit the access to the town centre for certain license plates during concrete time slots or days. Neural Labs' solution can generate alerts and even the corresponding sanction proposal n in case of detecting vehicles circulating outside their allowed schedule.

The access logics are always different on each municipality and it can include schedules, days of the week, holidays, residents lists, providers lists (load and unload), etc. Always using static or embedded cameras. 

 

Enforcement

Other applications focused on increasing traffic safety can be Red Light photo systems that detect and suggest a sanction when a vehicle doesn't respect a traffic light or the ones that detect when a wrong turn or an illegal stop is made (at a crossroad, for example). In all these cases license plate gets recognized, video evidence is stored, and the sanction is generated after an agent's validation.

Driving through a red light Alert configuration.

Some cities control the access to lanes exclusive for public transport with license plate recognition. In this case, allowed vehicles lists are accessed - including schedule restrictions- sanctioning those who are not included on them.

Low emission zones and traffic restrictions

Many cities like Barcelona, in Spain, are implementing control systems for the most polluting vehicles in the city. 

This application, that many times ends in a sanction, is 100% based on license plate recognition. Once known the vehicle's license plate, the system accesses to its technical file on the government's database to verify its pollution levels.

Many South American cities, like, for example, Bogotá, have been applying, for years, rules based on license plates (odd and even, etc.) to determine which vehicles can circulate, during rush hours, every day of the week. 

Mobility

We implement, on our cities' Mobility Departments, solutions based on measuring, acting, and remeasuring. 

The objective is to make our cities more humane, safe, and efficient. Our systems allow to "understand" what is happening on a traffic environment.  They are more focused on a measuring purpose than a sanction one.

Even most of these applications don't have the original objective to uniquely identify vehicles, it's true that having this identification offers more strength to the posterior analysis of the gathered data, for example, with the origin- destination matrices.

Some examples of this measurements using our traffic analysis: license plate, colour, make, vehicle classification, speed, etc. are:

• Average times of travelling between two points 
• Average speed on a concrete spot (distribution, etc.)
• Traffic jams detection
• Vehicle counting
• Traffic distribution according to different vehicle classification (car, motorcycle, truck, etc.).

Nowadays, the mobility sector is investing on making cities more humane and efficient. Neural Labs solutions and technologies are some of the tools needed to make it happen.

Conclusions

Neural Labs solutions existent on different cities help them to be safer and improve traffic and mobility.

As it has been noticed, they are a vital productivity tool in vehicle monitoring and control matters. 

Our open system allows us to integrate with other existing systems in the market, offering integral solutions to our clients, which is one of the key points of our company.

Through our analytics, the video surveillance works autonomously, in a smart and efficient way, to generate alerts only when needed.

From Neural Labs we work to improve our already existing analytics and functionalities and to add more that will complement the suite on other locations we will install them on. 

Likewise, we offer the needed consultancy to design and deploy traffic analysis solutions adapted to each city's needs. 

Article originally published in Tecnoseguro on 18th February 2020