Witnessing the field testing of the optical vehicle-velocity sensor

The decision by the National Police Agency to promote the Universal Traffic Management System (UTMS) has initiated investigation in the UTMS project to provide sophisticated and intelligent traffic control. With ITCS at its core, the Universal Traffic Management System combines five subsystems, AMIS, PTPS, MOCS, EPMS, and DRGS. The UTMS is intended to provide not only traffic signal control as in the conventional system but also to realize sophisticated control based on two-way communication with vehicles, such as navigating vehicles to their destinations, and giving priority at signals to buses and other public vehicles. Near infrared (IR) is the key to this two-way communication. IR has long been used in vehicle sensors for traffic signal control. To create a more sophisticated traffic control system, however, multifunctional sensing ability is required rather than a simple vehicle sensing function. To meet this need, NEC Corp., has developed an optical vehicle-velocity sensor providing a vehicle velocity measurement function, a vehicle type identification function and a two-way communication function in addition to the vehicle sensing function of the conventional optical sensors. Field testing of the optical vehicle-velocity sensor was conducted in Mie prefecture, Japan. The test procedures and results are given