As visitors to the Q-Free booth at the ITS World Congress Detroit will see, the company has transformed its portfolio, shifting from a predominant focus on tolling to cover all aspects of road operations – financing, condition monitoring, real-time management and emerging cooperative ITS applications.
September 7, 2014
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Transforming the portfolio: Jenny Simonsen of Q-Free
As visitors to the 108 Q-Free booth at the ITS World Congress Detroit will see, the company has transformed its portfolio, shifting from a predominant focus on tolling to cover all aspects of road operations – financing, condition monitoring, real-time management and emerging cooperative ITS applications.
With the event being staged in Detroit, it provides Q-Free with an opportunity to highlight its appreciable presence in the North American market. Recently it acquired 5660 Open Roads Consulting, a specialist in advanced transportation management and traveller information systems that operates mission-critical traffic systems and undertakes video-based surveillance of critical assets in 30 states across the US.
Previously, Q-Free bought 7045 TCS International, a US-based, international supplier of advanced parking guidance systems. Meanwhile, Dacolian USA, another Q-Free group company, is North America’s major supplier of automatic number plate recognition and vehicle signature recognition image processing software.
Nevertheless, says Thomas Falck, CEO, these developments have to be considered in an international context: “The North American region will play an increasing part in our future but it is the international nature of our business which remains one of our core strengths. We will be keen to demonstrate at the 6456 ITS World Congress that with offices around the world, we have a huge range of talent and experience on which to draw. This means we can create solutions which benefit from the best of global practice but which, nevertheless, are closely tailored to local needs.”
Organizing committees are gearing up for the next two ITS World Congress and Exhibitions, using ITS America 2013 to ensure continuity between the shows, cultivate interest and build momentum.
German company Sensati will use Intertraffic Amsterdam 2014 to unveil its new LED matrix display for parking guidance systems. Besides numbers and animated arrows, it also shows pictograms and texts, and all functions can be remotely controlled, including editing the texts. A modern look is achieved by a black window front where the signage lights through but the technology behind is completely invisible. To minimise light refl ections, the window is satinised and the display is available in various sizes a
Austria’s largest non-university research institute, Austrian Institute of Technology (AIT), together with industry partner and rail technology leader Bombardier Transportation, has developed a solution aimed at reducing the risk of rail vehicle collisions.
They claim that in the future, trams will be able to detect obstacles and correctly assess their potential danger. A specially developed optical 3D sensor system for light rail vehicles such as trams will make them proactive, intelligent an
