JPH0628596A - Image processing type overspeed warning device - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE:To visually display the vehicle register number together with the actual traveling speed or the overspeed of a car to a speed violating driver. CONSTITUTION:An image pickup means 1 which is installed over a road and picks up the image of a travelling vehicle from the front at the fixed time intervals to successively output a video signal detects the number plate position of the vehicle, recognizes the vehicle register number and outputs the vehicle number signal of the coincident vehicle register numbers. On the other hand, a vehicle number recognition and speed deciding means 2 determines the actual traveling distance of the vehicle from the detection displacing positions of the number plates of the two still pictures of the coincident vehicle numbers and calculates the actual speed of the corresponding vehicle from the relation between the actual traveling distance and a time difference at the time of picking up the still picture to output an actual tavelling signal or to output an overspeed signal when the actual speed exceeds a regulated speed. Then, the vehicle register number, the actual traveling speed or the overspeed of the vehicle being a warning object are visually displayed.

Description

Detailed Description of the Invention

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to an "image processing type overspeed warning device" utilizing image processing technology, and more particularly to a driver of a vehicle traveling at a speed exceeding a regulated speed on general roads or highways. On the other hand, the present invention relates to an image processing type overspeed warning device capable of visually displaying the actual traveling speed or the overspeed together with the vehicle registration number of the own vehicle and issuing a warning to comply with the regulated speed.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art As is well known, on a general road or a highway, a straight road that tends to overspeed, just before a curve that needs to be decelerated, or a microwave or supersonic wave at the confluence point from the highway to the general road. An ultrasonic overspeed warning device using the sonic Doppler effect is installed. In this overspeed warning device, the wave transmitter emits ultrasonic waves diagonally upward and forward toward the traveling vehicle, the wave receiver receives the reflected wave from the traveling vehicle, and the Doppler effect that appears in the reflected wave causes the speed determiner to detect the speed. Measures the vehicle speed. Then, when the speed determiner detects a vehicle traveling at a speed exceeding the preset limit speed, the warning indicator gives an output, and the warning indicator displays a warning message "Slow down".

However, when the vehicle speed is measured by utilizing the Doppler effect of ultrasonic waves in the ultrasonic type overspeed warning device, a sudden large error may occur in the measured value depending on weather conditions. There is a problem with the accuracy of the vehicle speed measurement, and the content of the warning message is unspecified.It only displays to the driver that decelerating driving will be performed, so it is especially important for parties concerned on highways and highways with heavy traffic. Sometimes a speeding driver overlooked the warning. Therefore, in the warning method that displays a warning to such unspecified number of drivers,
It is imperative to develop an overspeed warning device that can not strongly alert the speeding party to the attention of deceleration driving and can display a warning message only to speeding persons to prompt deceleration driving. It had been.

[0004]

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION The present invention enables a specific request to limit a warning message to a speeding vehicle and warn a driver to comply with the speed limit. To provide a highly accurate image processing type overspeed warning device that can visually display the actual traveling speed or overspeed together with the vehicle registration number of the own vehicle and issue a warning to comply with the regulated speed. This is a technical issue.

[0005]

Means adopted by the present invention for solving the above technical problems will be described below with reference to the accompanying drawings. That is, according to the present invention, the photographing means 1 for photographing the running vehicle installed above the road at regular time intervals from the front and outputting the video signal one by one.
Then, the approach of the vehicle is detected from the image signal from the photographing means 1, a plurality of still images of the vehicle are stored, the position of the license plate of the vehicle is detected for each of these still images, and the license plate is attached to the license plate. While recognizing the vehicle registration number and outputting the vehicle number signal of the matching vehicle registration number, the actual traveling distance of the vehicle is obtained from the detected displacement position of the license plates of the two still images with the same vehicle registration number, and The actual speed of the vehicle is calculated from the relationship between the actual travel distance and the time difference when the still image is taken, and the actual travel signal is output, or an overspeed signal is output when the actual speed exceeds the regulation speed. The vehicle number recognition / speed determination means 2 for outputting is included, and the vehicle to be warned based on the vehicle number signal, the actual speed signal and the overspeed signal from the vehicle number recognition / speed determination means 2 Actual travel speed with tanks registration number or by employing means of the overspeed visibly display, is had to solve the technical problems described above.

[0006]

In the image processing type overspeed warning device configured as described above, the vehicle number recognition / speed determination means 2 stores the still images of the video signals input from the photographing means 1 one by one,
While checking the matching of the vehicle registration numbers of the vehicles recognized for these still images, the actual traveling distance of the vehicle and the still image obtained from the detected displacement position of the license plate in the two still images with the matching vehicle registration numbers are taken. Since the actual speed of the vehicle is calculated from the relationship with the time difference when
It is possible to display the actual traveling speed or the excess speed together with the vehicle registration number of the own vehicle to the speeding driver.

[0007]

The present invention will be described in more detail below with reference to the accompanying drawings. In the figure, what is designated by reference numeral 1 is a photographing means fixed above the road via a support (see FIG. 4), and in this embodiment, in a stable state without image blur even under normal continuous illumination. A TV camera with a shutter (hereinafter simply referred to as a TV camera) capable of capturing an image is used. The TV camera 1 captures an image of a running vehicle from the front at regular time intervals and outputs a video signal thereof to a vehicle recognition / speed determination device 2 described later.

Reference numeral 2 is a vehicle number recognition / speed determination device using a non-Neumann type image processing processor capable of processing a large amount of image data at high speed. As shown in FIG. The position detecting unit 22, the vehicle number recognizing unit 23, the vehicle number collating unit 24, the speed calculating unit 25, and the speed determining unit 26 are included. The vehicle number recognition / speed determination device 2 is attached to a column on which the TV camera 1 is installed (see FIG. 4), and the image freeze unit 21 inputs the video signal from the TV camera 1.

The image freeze section 21 is used for the TV camera 1.
The horizontal differential maximum value of one line of the input video signal is calculated in real time, the entry of the vehicle is detected from the time change of this value, and a plurality of still images of the vehicle are stored.

The license plate position detection unit 22 detects the license plate position of the photographing vehicle for each still image stored in the image freeze unit 21, and when detecting the license plate position for each still image, First, the horizontal differential maximum value is calculated from the lower part of the screen, and the line in which this value sharply increases is used as the lowermost part of the license plate, and the upper part thereof is used as the license plate area for rough vertical position detection. After that, a horizontal differential image of the same license plate area is created, and the differential images are vertically integrated, binarized, and added, and the continuation other than "0" in this data string becomes the longest. That is the license plate part.

The vehicle number recognition unit 23 recognizes the vehicle registration number of the vehicle in each still image on the basis of the horizontal differential image in each still image in the license plate position detection unit 22. That is, the license plate portions of the horizontal differential image are integrated in the horizontal direction and then binarized, and the portion where the continuation of "1" is the longest is used as the numeral area. Here, the threshold value of the numeral area is obtained and binarized, and those having more “0” than “1” are regarded as business vehicles, and those not having them are regarded as private vehicles. In this way, after distinguishing a commercial car from a private car, the binarized numerical area is vertically integrated, and the part where this value is "0" is used as a character break to cut out five characters, and based on the difference in character height, After classifying ".", "-" And several characters "1", the distance feature amount from the left and right edge portions to the line segment forming the character is obtained, and these are classified to classify other few characters "0", "2" to "9" are recognized, and finally the number of digits of the vehicle registration number is recognized from the character arrangement.

The vehicle number collating section 24 collates the vehicle registration numbers recognized by the vehicle number recognizing section 23 with respect to the vehicles in the respective still images, and the vehicle registration number data of the vehicles in the respective still images coincide with each other. Is checked, and a vehicle number signal indicating the matched vehicle registration number data is output to the display data generating device 3 described later.

The speed calculation unit 25 includes the image freeze unit 2
Among the plurality of still images stored by No. 1, the vehicle number matching unit 24
When the vehicle number signal is output by the vehicle, the actual traveling distance of the vehicle is calculated from the detected displacement position data of the license plate in the two still images where the vehicle registration number is recognized, and the TV camera 1 detects the actual traveling distance and the still image. The actual speed of the vehicle is calculated from the relationship with the time difference data at the time of shooting.

The speed determination unit 26 inputs the actual speed data from the speed calculation unit 25 and outputs an actual speed signal corresponding to the actual speed data to the display data generating device 3 described later, while the actual speed data is preliminarily obtained. When the actual speed data exceeds the restricted speed data, an overspeed signal that means an overspeed is output to the display data generation device 3 by subtraction processing with the set restricted speed data.

Reference numeral 3 denotes a display data generating device, which inputs a vehicle number signal, an actual speed signal and an overspeed signal from the vehicle number recognizing / speed judging device 2 and outputs a vehicle registration number and an actual vehicle registration number of a vehicle to be warned. The display data of the traveling speed, or the vehicle registration number and the overspeed is generated, and the display signal is output to the warning indicator 4 described later. The display data generating device 3
Are arranged on columns of a warning indicator 4, which will be described later, as shown in FIG.

Reference numeral 4 is a warning indicator for displaying a warning message to the driver, which is installed at a predetermined distance from the installation position of the TV camera 1 in the traveling direction of the vehicle (see FIG. 4). Then, when the display signal is input from the display data generating device 3, the warning indicator 4 indicates, for example, to a driver of a vehicle that is traveling at a speed exceeding the regulation speed, “a vehicle of number XXXXX, XX km over. Visually display a warning message to the effect of slowing down.

Next, a series of operations of the apparatus of this embodiment will be described with reference to FIG.
This will be described based on the flowchart shown in First, TV
When the camera 1 shoots a moving vehicle from the front at regular time intervals and outputs the video signal to the image freeze unit 21 of the vehicle number recognition / speed determination device 2 (step 1), the image freeze unit 21 outputs the video signal. By detecting the entry of the vehicle, a plurality of still images of the vehicle are stored (step 2). next,
After the license plate position detection unit 22 detects the license plate position for each still image (step 3),
The vehicle number recognition unit 23 recognizes the vehicle registration number in each still image (step 4), and then the vehicle number verification unit 24 checks whether the vehicle registration numbers match in each still image and confirms the vehicle number signal of the matched vehicle registration number. Is output to the display data generating device 3 (step 5). Then, the speed calculation unit 25 of the vehicle number recognition / speed determination device 2 calculates the actual speed of the vehicle corresponding to the vehicle number signal (step 6), and the speed determination unit 26 notifies the display data generation device 3 of the actual speed signal or An overspeed signal is output (step 7). As a result, the data generation device 3 displays the actual traveling speed or the overspeed together with the registration number of the vehicle to be warned based on the vehicle number signal, the actual speed signal and the overspeed signal from the vehicle number recognition / speed determination device 2. The data is generated and the display signal is output to the warning indicator 4 (step 8). Therefore, the warning indicator 4 informs the speeding driver that "the number XXXXX vehicle, XX km over slow down". A warning is displayed (step 9).

[0018]

As described above, according to the present invention, the vehicle registration number of the vehicle is recognized by recognizing the vehicle registration number of the vehicle from the still image of the video signal obtained by photographing the traveling vehicle from the front at a constant time interval. Since the matching of the numbers is checked, the accuracy of recognizing the registration number of the vehicle is greatly improved, and the speed exceeding the actual running speed or the speed limit of the vehicle is calculated from the two still images with the matching vehicle registration number, which is a speed violation. Since the actual traveling speed or the overspeed is displayed to the driver along with the vehicle registration number of the vehicle, it is possible to strongly alert the speeding party to the deceleration driving.

[Brief description of drawings]

FIG. 1 is a functional block diagram showing an outline of an image processing type overspeed warning device according to the present invention.

FIG. 2 is a functional block diagram of a vehicle number recognition / speed determination device in the same device.

FIG. 3 is a flowchart showing the operation of the device.

FIG. 4 is an installation diagram showing an installation state of the apparatus.

[Explanation of symbols]

 1 TV camera with shutter 2 Vehicle number recognition / speed determination device 3 Display data generation device 4 Warning indicator

Claims (1)

[Claims] 1. A photographing means 1 which is installed above a road and photographs a moving vehicle from the front at a constant time interval and outputs a video signal one by one, and a vehicle signal is detected from the video signal from the photographing means 1. Then, a plurality of still images of the vehicle are stored, the position of the license plate of the vehicle is detected for each of these still images, and the vehicle registration number attached to the license plate is recognized to identify the vehicle number of the matching vehicle registration number. While outputting the signal, the actual traveling distance of the vehicle is obtained from the detected displacement position of the license plate of the two still images with the same vehicle registration number, and the relationship between the actual traveling distance and the time difference when the still image is captured And vehicle number recognition / speed determination means 2 that outputs the actual traveling signal by calculating the actual speed of the vehicle or outputs the overspeed signal when the actual speed exceeds the regulation speed. Then, the vehicle number recognition / speed determination means 2
An image processing system characterized by being configured to visually display the actual traveling speed or the overspeed together with the vehicle registration number of the vehicle to be warned based on the vehicle number signal, the actual speed signal and the overspeed signal from Overspeed warning device.