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Nortech and Idris vehicle classification technology trialled for tolling in China

South Africa-headquartered Nortech International, in conjunction with Beijing Navigator Technologies, has announced the conclusion of a successful trial of high accuracy vehicle classification for tolling on the Hebei Shi-huang Expressway in Hebei Province of China.
May 18, 2012 Read time: 3 mins
South Africa-headquartered 3560 Nortech International, in conjunction with Beijing Navigator Technologies, has announced the conclusion of a successful trial of high accuracy vehicle classification for tolling on the Hebei Shi-huang Expressway in Hebei Province of China.

Nortech International, which has become one of the world’s largest suppliers of inductive loop detectors with an installed based in excess of one million channels, became a certified 36 Idris Technology Partner of Diamond Consulting from UK in 2006 and under license supply the patented Idris Technology software onboard the Nortech developed hardware as solutions for traffic detection, data collection and incident detection for applications such as Vehicle Classification, Tolling, Vehicle Enforcement, Incident Detection, Vehicle Profiling and Journey Time.

Last month, Nortech, together with its local distributor Beijing Navigator Technologies (BNT), and supported by DCS, undertook the installation of the IDR206, rack mounted hardware, with Idris AT600 to classify vehicles according to the specifications released by the China Ministry of Transportation and National Development and Reform Committee.

This trial entailed the accurate classification of vehicles in 5 classes determined by the number of axles, number of wheels per axle and axle base.

BNT, together with the owners of the expressway, submitted a proposal to the provincial Department of Transport for the trial which is entered into as a research and confirmation project. Zhang Kairu , president of BNT went on to say in his motivation for the project approval,  that “in order to fully test the claimed accuracies of the system and also fully demonstrate the worthiness of the system under China’s current tolling network and data collection practice, a real-time site with live data was the only way to verify the supremacy of the technology. Furthermore, to explore the practicality of deploying the system across China’s expressway network.”

The results of the trial, supported by the raw data, will be presented to the owners of the Hebei Shi-huang Expressway before it is presented to the Hebei Department of Transportation and Highway administration bureau. Positive acceptance by these bureaus could lead to the results also been presented to the China Ministry of Transportation for appraisal under the Technology Innovation Awards, but the ultimate goal is that the system will be put forward at a national level as a solution to current issues that the tolling authorities are facing, particularly with providing reliable and accurate information.

According to Zhang “Using the IDRIS solution, the  reliability and precision of data acquisition and vehicle classification, when applied to our existing road toll network, will increase the work efficiency, achieve precise tolling information and eliminate fraud.”

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