2015

CSI 344 ASSIGNMENT 1

201102162
TSHEPANG LESEJANE
3/23/2015

SECTION 1
Introduction
Road traffic collisions are an important cause of death and disability worldwide. Every year
around the world 1.2 million people are killed and up to 50 million are injured or disabled as a
result of road traffic collisions.
(Peden M 2004) Morbidity from road traffic collisions is expected to increase in future years,
and it is estimated that road traffic collisions will move from ninth to third place in the global
burden of disease ranking, as measured in disability adjusted life years (Murray CJL et.al, 1997,
Roberts I,2002) .
Before the use of intelligent speed cameras or Automated Speed Enforcement camera law
enforcement officials had to setup by road side and monitor speed of vehicles. This could be
troublesome as law enforcement cant monitor outside working hour that is after 10pm hence
some drivers might get away with over speeding.
Measures to reduce traffic speed are considered essential to reducing casualties on the road.
Speed cameras are increasingly used to help to reduce traffic speeds in the belief that this will
reduce road traffic collisions and casualties, and an expansion in the use of speed cameras is
under way in many countries, most notably the United Kingdom(DTLR,2005)
Excessive driving is difficult to enforce especially highway work zones. For speed enforcement
by local police officers, there should be areas along the roadside suitable for officers to position
themselves for identifying a speeding vehicle and then to have it pull over so that a citation may
be issued. Work zones usually do not have such pullover areas, and speed enforcement is very
difficult in these areas. There are other locations also where speed enforcement by police officers
in the traditional manner can be difficult.
To cope with the enforcement problems discussed in the previous paragraph, one strategy, which
has been tried out in many cities and some states, is the use of cameras installed at selected
locations to record the license plate number of Red Light running and speeding vehicles so that
citations can be sent by mail.
The automated approach does not require a law enforcement officer to be present at the sites, and
the camera-based enforcement can be used during all 24 hours of the day.

Section 2(PEAS)
Performance Measure

Environment

Actuators

Sensors

Capture all speeding Vehicles

Roads and
vehicles

Camera Control Unit,

NIC(Network Interface
Card)

Slant radar

Accuracy

PERFORMANCE MEASURE
The performance measure for an Intelligent Police Speed Camera would be to identify speeding
vehicles, capture the license plate and a photo of the driver; however capturing the photo of
driver is not important as information and photograph information can be found after searching
the car license plate over the police database/transport database..
Accurate in sense that it should be able to capture license plate and speed of high speed vehicles

TASK ENVIRONMENT
The speed camera interacts with the road and the vehicles

ACTUATORS
Camera control unit provides photographic evidence of the vehicle at the scene of the offence
and records the time, date, location and speed of travel then a citation is sent by mail.
Network Interface Card to access database so as to reference license plate number with the
database and issue citations.

SENSORS
An ultra-high frequency microwave beam (slant radar) is transmitted at an angle to the traffic
flow. When the beam reflects off a moving object, its frequency is "shifted" slightly, enabling
speed to be calculated. Radar speed cameras can be set in "towards" or "away" modes. When a
vehicle passes through the radar beam above a preset speed (usually several km/h above the signposted limit), the front or rear license plate is photographed. It is also possible to use number
plate recognition with database comparison and image recording or an image/live streaming
mode in which one camera head is used for traffic enforcement and the other records violations.

SECTION 3
TASK ENVIRONMENT PROPERTIES
TASK
ENVIROMENT

OBSERVABLE

AGENTS

DETERMINISTIC

EPISODIC

Traffic Speed
Camera

Fully

Single
Agent

Stochastic

Episodic

STATIC

DISCRETE

Dynamic Continuous

Observable
The task environment for this agent is fully observable that the agent has access to all
information in the environment relevant to its task. The agent can view all incoming traffic and
their speeds.
Deterministic
Stochastic: the environment is always changing so the next state is not predictable given
knowledge of the previous state and the agent's action. Giving two citations does not mean that
in next state it will detect a speeding vehicle and issue another citations
Single Agent
Single Agent: there is only one agent that is the agent acts on its own does not need input from
other agents. Other agents performance measure does not depend on the performance of the this
agent.
Episodic
Episodic: One image has nothing to do with the next task. Capturing a speeding vehicle does not
mean the next vehicle is also speeding.
Static
Dynamic: Since the environment is always changing then we can say that the task environment is
Dynamic.
Discreteness
Continuous: The environment does not have fixed locations that is in the case of a road that has
two or three lanes the speeding vehicle might be captured in either of the lanes or time intervals

that is you cant really be sure of the time that a speeding vehicle may pass. In this case the
environment could be measured quantitatively to any level of precision.
Knowledge (known or unknown)
Known: in this case we can say that the environment is known that is the agent knows the laws
that govern the environment. We can say that the agent knows the speed limit of the
environment.

SECTION 4
AGENT TYPE
REFLEX AGENT
The agent act only on the basis of the current percept that is whether it detects a speeding
vehicle, ignoring the rest of the percept history. The agent function is based on the conditionaction rule: if condition then action.

AGENT: Intelligent traffic Police Speed Camera

ENVIRONMENT: Roads, Vehicles
STATES: Speeding Vehicle, No Speeding Vehicle
CONDITION ACTION RULE: if speeding vehicle, camera on, take pictures of license plate
ACTUATORS: Camera control unit, NIC(Network Interface Card)
SENSORS: Slant Radar

Condition Action Rule

function SIMPLE-REFLEX-AGENT(percept) returns an action static:

rules, a set if condition-action rules
state <-- INTERPRET_INPUT(percept) rule <-- RULE_MATCH(state,
rules) action <-- RULE_ACTION[rule] return action

SECTION 5
AGENT OVERVIEW
Speed-Measuring
Speed-measuring requires the ability to detect and discriminate individual vehicles on a roadway
and measure their speeds in real time. This can be achieved using Slant radar. Speed-measuring
using equipment requires a view of the target vehicle with limited obstructions such as road-side
vegetation or other vehicles in the line of sight. In-ground sensors overcome many of the
challenges of line of sight, but are immobile and likely require road closures for installation and
maintenance. The accuracy of speed-measuring devices is crucial. Most speed-measuring devices
are equally accurate measuring approaching or receding traffic speeds and are accurate to within
1 mph when used properly. Target vehicle discrimination is especially important on roads with
high volumes and multiple lanes of traffic.
Camera Control Unit
Camera Control Unit component receives data from the speed-measuring unit and compares the
speed data against the threshold that was set to define violations in real time. If a vehicles speed
exceeds the threshold, the unit identifies the vehicle as a violator and triggers the camera to
photograph the vehicle. Additional information such as time, date, and opera-tor-entered
information is also recorded with the speed data. Information about non-speeding vehicles may
also be recorded for broader data collection purposes (e.g., to compare a violators speed to the
average or 85th percentile speed of traffic at the location).
Image capture
The image capture component includes one or more cameras that photograph the speed violation
in progress when they are triggered by the computer. The photographs must include a legible
image of the license plate and, if driver identification is required, a clear image of the drivers
face. A fast shutter speed and high image resolution are essential features. Figure below shows
mobile speed camera radar

Fig. 1 mobile speed camera(in car)

Fig. 2 and 3 mobile speed camera(tripod)

Figure 2. Pole-mounted ASE system in Washington, DC

SECTION 6
CONCLUSION
Road traffic crashes are a major cause of death and disability in all countries. The speed at which
a vehicle travels is an important determinant of injury; the greater the speed of vehicle, the
greater the energy inflicted on the passengers during a crash, and the greater the injury.
Excessive speed (driving faster than the limit or too fast for the prevailing conditions) has been
found to contribute to the number of crashes. If the number of speeding drivers is reduced, both
the likelihood and severity of a crash will be lowered. Therefore, interventions aimed at reducing
traffic speed are considered essential to preventing road injuries and deaths. The enforcement of
safe speeds with speed cameras and associated automated devices is one such measure.

REFERENCES
1. Peden M, Scurfield R, Sleet D, Mohan D, Hyder AA, Jarawan E, et al.
World report on road traffic injury prevention. Geneva: World Health Organization,
2004
2. Murray CJL, Lopez AD. Alternative projections of mortality and disability by cause
1990-2020: global burden of disease study. Lancet 1997;349:1498504
3. Roberts I. War on the roads. BMJ 2002;324:11079
4. House of Commons Transport, Local Government and the Regions Committee. Road
traffic speed: ninth report of session 2001-2002, vol 1. London: Stationery Office, 2002.
5. Crombie H. The impact of transport and road traffic speed on health. London: Health
Development Agency, 2002.
6. DTLR press release. Life-saving cameras to be made more visible-Spellar, August 2001.
www.press.dtlr.gov.uk/pns/DisplayPN.cgi?pn_id=2001_0359 (accessed 5 Jan 2005).