Communications: electrical – Vehicle detectors – With camera
Reexamination Certificate
1999-11-22
2001-02-13
Pope, Daryl (Department: 2736)
Communications: electrical
Vehicle detectors
With camera
C340S933000, C701S117000, C707S793000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06188329
ABSTRACT:
STATEMENT REGARDING FEDERALLY SPONSORED RESEARCH OR DEVELOPMENT
N/A
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
The disclosed system relates generally to automated systems for traffic violation enforcement, and more specifically to a system for integrating digital video recordings of potential traffic violations with a vehicle information database, as may be provided by department of motor vehicles (DMV) vehicle registration database, in order to generate traffic citations.
Traffic violation enforcement in general, including generation of citations and court date scheduling, is a costly, resource intensive endeavor. Police departments facing budget restrictions have been hard pressed to allocate sufficient officers and other personal to perform the related tasks of traffic intersection monitoring, traffic citation generation, and court date scheduling.
In recent years, attempts have been made to automate traffic light violation enforcement. Existing systems have included fixed position cameras for taking still photographs of potential violation events, and vehicle detectors located in proximity to a monitored intersection. However, such systems have included no mechanism with which a citation could be conveniently generated using automatically collected information regarding the alleged violation, in combination with vehicle information from a database. Accordingly, citation generation and court date scheduling have involved much costly and time consuming manual processing.
For the above reasons it would be desirable to have an automated traffic light violation citation generator and court date scheduling system, which provides convenient access to information regarding the violation event, as well as to vehicle information from a vehicle database. The system should further be secure with regard to protecting the privacy of persons involved in events which are determined to be non-violations.
BRIEF SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
A system and method for integrating traffic light violation citation generation and court date scheduling which employs recordings of the alleged violation on digitized video frames. The disclosed system interfaces end to end violation event recording and management using one or more digitized recordings of at least one violation event, together with vehicle information, as may for example be provided from a department of motor vehicles (DMV) database. The system may also provide a court date scheduling function for selecting available court dates. The court date scheduling function may employ manually entered court dates, and/or may interface directly to a court date scheduling database which includes indications of various available times at which hearings regarding traffic violations may be scheduled.
In an illustrative embodiment, a video based traffic violation recording unit, including at least one video camera, is deployed at an intersection to record violation videos of violation events. A vehicle database storing information related to specific vehicles is accessible, either through a direct communications link, or indirectly by way of vehicle information requests. The contents of the vehicle database is used in order to identify owners of violating vehicles shown in the violation video. A user interface is provided including a display showing one or more perspectives on the violation event, as well as access to the vehicle database. An authorized user, for example a police officer, operates the interface to 1) view the recorded views of the event, 2) determine whether a citationable violation has occurred, 3) extract any vehicle identification information from the recording, 4) initiate actions to obtain owner information regarding the vehicle from the vehicle database, based on the extracted vehicle identification, 5) generate a citation with regard to the violation, and 6) in the event a summons is eventually issued including a hearing date with regard to the violation, schedule a hearing date with regard to the violation in response to the available court dates in the court date database. In one embodiment, a citation generator is provided which enables the user to generate a citation which including at least a portion of the violation video, for example, one or more extracted still images.
Since each violation video may or may not be a recording of a citationable event, the user interface enables a user to mark a particular violation video as a non-violation. This feature enables the system to comply with the requirement that a police office actually evaluate the recordings and initiate the generation of any resulting citations. Because the nature of video recordings may raise certain privacy issues with regard to the persons recorded thereon, when a violation video is marked as a non-violation, the associated violation video is purged from the system. Similarly, because security is very important in this context, so as to protect the privacy of the persons recorded on the videos, and the database itself is password protected. Various access permission levels may be provided, enabling certain actions to be performed only by certain pre-approved persons who must provide appropriate usernames and passwords. While the video recordings associated with a non-violation event are purged, statistical information is generated and stored with regard to all recorded events, thus enabling comprehensive system evaluation without raising privacy concerns.
Accordingly there is disclosed an integrated traffic light violation citation generation and court date scheduling system which ties together digitized video violation recordings with vehicle information from a vehicle database such as the department of motor vehicles vehicle registration database. The disclosed system provides a centralized utility for evaluating recordings of potential violations, generating citations, and scheduling court dates. The disclosed system further provides mechanisms to protect the privacy of persons involved in events that are later determined to be non-violations.
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Coimbatore Lalitha R.
Glier Michael T.
Hsieh Steven S.
Johnson Greg D.
Laird Mark D.
Nestor, Inc.
Pope Daryl
Weingarten, Schurgin Gagnebin & Hayes LLP
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