Xerox is rolling out new technology designed to help traffic flow more smoothly in major metropolitan areas. It’s aimed at those special highway lanes designated for carpooling.
The carpooling or 'high occupancy vehicle' lanes have been around in big cities for a while now, but the trick is finding a way to make sure people in those lanes are following the law. Too often, some of those cars have just one person in them, which defeats the purpose.
Now, Xerox researchers, mostly those in Webster, have come up with software which helps video cameras automatically determine if the vehicles in the high occupancy lanes have the required number of passengers in them.
Ken Mihalyov is Xerox's Chief Innovation Officer for transportation services. He says this new technology would still require a police officer to decide whether or not a driver would be ticketed for not following the carpooling rules.
“We provide what we consider a candidate violation set of information to the enforcement officer and then they go out and pull the vehicle over or do what visual inspection they need to do to confirm that there’s actually a violation. “
Mihalyov says this is a natural outgrowth of Xerox technology which originally focused on copiers and printers and how to extract information from images. Xerox still makes copying equipment, but is increasingly focused on providing business services.
