About the new information and communication technology for the trucking industry

Continuing the topic started by the respected drosselmayer in a series of articles on intelligent transport systems (ITS) and charging systems (SVP), I would like to expand it a bit and try to tell about the further development of information and communication technologies in the interests of the road transport industry.

I'll start with a small review.

Currently, in Russia, driving license is almost two thirds of the population. Or in absolute terms - about 100 million people. The number of vehicles exceeded 50 million. Anyone who drives the car himself has felt the increased density of traffic, and the urban residents additionally have difficulty parking.

Maintaining the necessary level of control over the increased traffic flows leads to an increase in the burden on controlling personnel. A very expensive budget for an increase in the number of traffic inspectors does little to correct the situation. Under these conditions, the use of technical means of transport control becomes inevitable.

Particularly widespread system of video recording violations of traffic rules (traffic rules). The video camera "captures" the image of a metal plate with a license plate, then a computer program recognizes this image and turns it into a digital signal. The rest is a matter of technology (computer).

True, the reliability of video recording systems for the recognition of numbers does not reach 100 percent. For reference, according to the claimed technical characteristics of the hardware and software complex "Stream", the percentage of correctly recognized state registration marks (clean and flawless) during the daytime is at least 95%, at nighttime the day is at least 60%, with illumination in the area control in a vertical plane of at least 60 lux.

For this reason, it becomes necessary to attract specialized personnel to visually check the recognition accuracy. But this measure does not give the desired effect. Such a conclusion can be made on the basis of reports appearing in the media from time to time about complaints of disgruntled drivers against their accusations of traffic violations. At the same time, drivers submit notices received by mail about fines with pictures of vehicles that have nothing to do with their own cars. This means that during visual verification, the fact of non-compliance was missed, which is quite natural: a person is not a machine. To control the quality of such work is unreal.

The reason for this state of affairs lies in the systemic flaws inherent in the video recording technology used.

The signal source in it is an image of a metal plate with symbols drawn on it. The plates themselves appeared in the second half of the 19th century and since then, in fact, have undergone only one fundamental change: reflective paints have been used. The signal is basically analog. And only after computer processing of the image of characters it becomes digital.

Many factors affect the outgoing signal in the visible wavelength range. This geometric distortion, and weather conditions, and the state of optics.

One of the main drawbacks of video recording systems is the difficulty of scaling. First of all. Creating a control point and equipping it with special equipment is not cheap in itself. Additional costs require periodic maintenance. Secondly, the existing flows of vehicles are so significant that in practice the minimum percentage of possible number recognition errors stated in the technical specifications may increase to thousands of complaints that can overwhelm any administrative system with an increase in the number of control points.

Another painful topic in cities is parking and car parking. How many negative emotions are splashed over the actions of valet parking and evakuatorschiki! In order to monitor compliance with the parking rules, mobile crews are created that patrol the streets. There are glimpses in the press about increasing the number of such crews and bringing their number to several hundred (in Moscow). The effect of such activities is, but for society as a whole, it is rather negative.

Namely: not only material costs are significant (the operation of special vehicles, their equipment with video recording and number recognition systems, evacuation services, fuel and maintenance costs, staff costs), but also, more importantly, the health and nervous energy of citizens. Punitive measures do not contribute to strengthening the moral climate of society. Man-to-person relationships are always fraught with a manifestation of the corruption component. Which, by the way, is observed: various firms are hovering around the valet parking and evacuators.

Some of the drivers are trying to deceive video recording systems. Due to the inherent technology of the system deficiencies used, this is quite simple. If desired, on the Internet you can find a description of the mass of methods of misleading. Starting from the banal painting and gluing of characters to the use of special sprays and highlighting of car numbers with rays in a certain wavelength range.

Hence the authorities' strategy to improve road safety: tougher repression and an increase in the size of fines. "Whip Policy" gives its results. Not without reason in the media there are reports that some cameras are just turned off and play the role of a garden scarecrow. The key reason for this fact is the previously mentioned difficulty of scaling video recording systems.

So why is society in the age of digital signaling stubbornly clinging to technology that goes back to the 19th century?

Reports of new technologies to control transport occasionally flash in the media.

But all these electronic tags and systems based on satellite navigation are only of local application, and in no way can serve as the basis for comprehensive control of transport.

The reason lies in the simplicity of the violation of their functioning with the minimum available means. That is why, for example, systems based on satellite navigation are used only with the personal interest of drivers in their presence on the vehicle or in transport companies where it is possible to exercise constant control over the absence of external interference in their work.

In other words, the threshold for unauthorized access to these systems is extremely low.

Is it possible to make the traffic control systemic, permanent, transparent and at the same time informative, helping the driver to follow the rules of the road in real time?

A positive answer to this question can be given by the domestic development, which can be called the “Electronic state registration plate of the vehicle”.

In fact, behind this name lies a digital information and communication technology, which makes it possible to identify the vehicle with absolute precision at the control point. At the same time, it has the most achievable, at the current level of technology development, protection from unauthorized interference with its work. The latter circumstance reduces attempts to substitute or clone an electronic license plate to a practically impossible task and makes it possible to associate such a sign with a debit bank card.

An additional positive factor in technology is the ability to provide immediate feedback to the driver in case of possible violations of the rules of the road. By this, such control is fundamentally different from video recording systems, in which the “letter of happiness” with a message about the violation comes with a delay of several days and even weeks from the moment of its occurrence and loses its warning violation effect.

The possibility of creating such technologies arose at the end of the 20th century, when computer technology began to develop rapidly. During this period, the calculation speed doubled every two years, the density of recording information on electronic media increased, and, accordingly, the access time to it decreased.

At the same time, wireless communication systems based on digital signal processing have developed. The speed of information transmission has increased, its noise immunity, and the reliability of communication has improved. The computing power of computer hardware allowed the use of complex cryptoalgorithms to protect the transmitted information from unauthorized access attempts.

All these factors combined led to the appearance of software and hardware systems that allow solving complex applied problems in industries where high reliability and security is required. As an example, the cellular communication system, mobile banking, electronic payment systems.

If in the early access control systems, the exchange of signals took place at the hardware level, in modern information and communication systems, the devices are only terminal devices in the complex architecture of the software and hardware complex.

The claimed technology differs from the transport control systems described above by the fact that at each control point it is supposed to carry out a procedure of mutual authentication (authentication) of a device installed on a vehicle and executed functionally inseparable from it, and a control point device installed in traffic areas or parking of vehicles.

Mutual device authentication is necessary to enhance the protection of the system against unauthorized interference with its operation. There is no doubt that, simultaneously with the introduction of the system into practice, attempts will be made to bypass it. Due to the peculiarities of the operation of vehicles and in conditions of unlimited time and in the resources involved, this task becomes quite feasible.

It will be enough for attackers to at least once hack the system so that it leads to its complete discredit. That is why the tasks of protection against unauthorized access in the claimed method of control of transport paid maximum attention. A device that will attempt to scan an electronic vehicle number must also be checked for legitimacy, as well as the number itself (the device representing it). This check will reduce the possibility of substitution or cloning of an electronic license plate to a practically impossible task.

To increase reliability, information and communication systems with a high degree of responsibility introduce additional authentication factors, as well as carry out various organizational and technical measures: limiting access attempts, one-time password validity time, etc.

In the inventive technology, original legitimacy testing algorithms, which are developer know-how, are used as additional authentication factors.

All messaging is done over wireless digital communications protocols. To increase protection, signals are encrypted with a periodic change of encryption and exchange passwords.

The use of wireless digital communications enables the exchange of service messages. In case of violation of traffic rules, the driver is notified of this fact in real time. It is worth noting that the device control points, if necessary, are performed with the ability to fix the intersection of conditional-control lines: stop lines, dividing lines, parking restraints lines, etc.

It is clear that the possibility of conducting the mutual authentication procedure at any necessary control point will require the creation of a communication network with permanent communication with a special data storage and processing center.

A precedent for this state of affairs has already been created. This technology is used throughout the well-known and widely used cellular communication system. The seeming continuity of conversations of interlocutors who are, for example, hundreds of kilometers from each other, does not mean at all that the signal reaches their cell phones along the same route. In fact, information packets containing a digitally encoded voice can be delivered to the interlocutor in completely different ways. Next, the output is the assembly of packets into one data set, which, after processing, we perceive as continuous speech. The whole process is controlled by computer equipment.

In comparison with the cellular communication system in the proposed technology, the communication session will take place in more benign conditions. So, its duration will not exceed a few milliseconds, so there is no need to take technical measures to maintain communication continuity over a long period of time. The session itself will be carried out under conditions of direct visibility for a distance not exceeding 100 meters.

The proposed system is easy to scale. That is, the control equipment can be equipped with literally every traffic light object, highway, street and parking lot. The technology provides for the distribution of computing power depending on the number of control points and the load on them.

So what opportunities will appear after the introduction of such a control system in practice?

As mentioned earlier, an absolute guarantee of reliability will allow you to associate an electronic state registration number not only with a bank card, but generally with any information system with a high degree of responsibility. This will fundamentally change the situation in the trucking industry. It will allow to integrate it into a single information space of the country.

Transport control will be systematic and permanent. The thesis of the inevitability of punishment will acquire a real embodiment. Moreover, the violation will be reported to the driver immediately, which should affect road safety in general. And it is not necessary to immediately punish the driver. Perhaps the accrual of a certain amount of points on his "personal account". This will reveal malicious violators. But for those who have violations rarely and occasionally, you can write off points after a certain period of driving without violations. I want to remind once again that all these activities are controlled by the program complex of the system.

Such a control system will measure the average speed of the car on the road. Currently, speed measurements are performed using systems based on the symbiosis of radar and video cameras, which allow a certain percentage of errors in their work.

You can list some more applications of the system:

• parking and parking;
• travel on toll roads;
• control of public transport with informing at the stopping point about the time of his arrival;
• informing about the expiration of the period for making obligatory payments;
• assistance to transport companies in tracking passenger and cargo traffic;
• opening new perspectives in logistics.

The list goes on. A consumer of information can be literally every enterprise or organization, one way or another connected with the road transport industry. For drivers, an important factor will be informing about the real workload of highways and streets, as well as about the average speed of movement on them.

This information will be input for intelligent transport systems (ITS), which were mentioned at the beginning of the article. Moreover, it will allow them to bring them to a qualitatively new level due to the vastness and reliability of the information received.

As noted earlier, charging systems (SVPs) are gently integrated into the overall traffic control complex.

A side effect is expected from the appearance of an additional tool in the fight against the criminal use of transport, as well as against car thefts.

Well, in my opinion, the projected “car without a driver” will require the mandatory use of the possibilities provided by such a system. First, because of the already mentioned breadth of intersections, highways, streets. Secondly, because of the need to prevent possible attempts of unauthorized interference with the operation of such cars,

In general, the functioning of such a system of transport control will give a tangible economic effect. The main argument in favor of the introduction of the “Electronic State Vehicle License Plate” will be to increase traffic safety and reduce the level of injury and death on the country's roads.