Skip to main content

UK cities trial pollution-measuring lasers

A new system that combines laser-based remote sensing and automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) is being trialled in London and Birmingham in a bid to catch polluting cars. Developed by Hager Environmental and Atmospheric Technologies (HEAT), the emissions detecting and reporting system (EDAR) remotely detects and measures infrared absorption of environmentally critical gases coming out of a moving vehicle. The technology is combined with still/scene camera technology and an ANPR camera, which al
February 16, 2016 Read time: 2 mins
A new system that combines laser-based remote sensing and automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) is being trialled in London and Birmingham in a bid to catch polluting cars.

Developed by Hager Environmental and Atmospheric Technologies (HEAT), the emissions detecting and reporting system (EDAR) remotely detects and measures infrared absorption of environmentally critical gases coming out of a moving vehicle.

The technology is combined with still/scene camera technology and an ANPR camera, which allows for the capture of not only a 2D image of the vehicle for vehicle profiling as it passes below the EDAR unit, but also a 3D multi spectral image of the entire exhaust plume and the identification of the subject vehicle.  

The company claims that EDAR’s valid read accuracy rate on a multi-lane state highway during heavy rush hour traffic is over 86 per cent and increases to 95 per cent on single-lane highway applications.  ‘Invalid reads’ are said to be typically due to situational exhaust plume interference or inadequate vehicle specific power.

Related Content

  • Progress of ICT transport research projects
    February 3, 2012
    Juhani Jääskeläinen, head of the ICT for Transport Unit, DG Information Society and Media, European Commission, details the results of Call 4 for research projects in ICT for transport. Since the closure of the call and evaluation process during the summer of last year the European Commission (EC) has been negotiating and signing contracts with projects which were selected from proposals submitted to Call 4 of the 7th Framework Programme (FP7) in the area of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) fo
  • Cellint measures speed and travel time without roadside infrastructure
    April 10, 2014
    Collecting speed and travel time data without using roadside infrastructure could offer new possibilities to cash-strapped road authorities. Streaming video may be useful for traffic controllers to monitor incidents and automatic number plate recognition may be required for enforcement, but neither are necessary for many ITS functions. For instance travel times, tailbacks, percentage of vehicles turning, origin and destination analysis can all be done using Bluetooth and/or WI-Fi sensors and without video o
  • Traffic to flow freely over world’s widest bridge
    November 13, 2012
    Pete Goldin reports on a new Egis project in Canada, providing open road tolling operations for the widest bridge in the world. A bridge can present a bottleneck in a system of roads or it can support the smooth and unobstructed flow of traffic. Much depends on the bridge design, surrounding infrastructure and tolling system. By adding lanes and deploying open road tolling (ORT), the new Port Mann Bridge located in the metropolitan Vancouver area in British Columbia, will alleviate congestion at one of the
  • Siemens Mobility is clearing the air
    October 2, 2020
    Tens of thousands of premature deaths in the UK alone are linked to air quality - but it doesn’t have to be that way. Siemens Mobility’s Wilke Reints explains why