Products

After four and a half interesting years, this will be my last issue as editor of ITS International. Over that time, I have had the privilege to meet and interview some of the ITS sector’s big names, attend most of the industry’s major events and, I hope, pass on some of that information to you, the readers. What has become clear is that the era of public austerity has created in many local and regional authorities, a fear of being accused of ‘wasting taxpayers’ money’. This is preventing them from visiting

Bosch has launched its new 48-volt battery for hybrids which is designed to save fuel and reduce C02 emissions.The installation of the lithium-ion battery is designed for both compact cards, mini and microcards as well. The company claims that the inexpensive solution is due to the product design, as the battery requires no active cooling and its housing is made of plastic instead of metal, which also aims to bring costs down. Bosch’s engineers have designed the product so that the plastic housing can with

Test article 2

Test article 2

QRoutes has launched the latest version of its Transport Planning tool which is designed to simplify and improve the planning of school and special needs transport. It creates visual map-based results and enables planners to explore what-if scenarios to find new improved routes. The QRoutes Planner (QRP) can configure the system to take into account a range of variables affecting each route plan. These include board and alight times for different passenger types, and road type speed settings, which can be

The RetroTek-MU (RTM) has been certified to ASTM E 1710 standard as a dynamic mobile retroreflectometer, according to the testing, monitoring and certification association for road-owners, StrAus-Zert (SAZ). It is capable of measuring road markings/striping across the full width of a traffic lane simultaneously in one pass at traffic speeds up to 120km/h (75mph) and can be operated by one driver. The assessment, carried out by SAZ’s Dr Hans-Hubert Meseberg, also confirmed that the RTM is capable of

Clearview Intelligence, Zeta Specialist Lighting and AEV have produced a solar-powered road stud designed to reduce night-time road accidents by improving guidance and hazard warnings to night-time drivers. Called SolarLite 2 (SL2) the stud is said to provide visibility of the road geometry up to 900m ahead - a 10 fold increase over reflective studs - and to decrease night- time accidents by over 70%. It uses solar powered high intensity LEDs, which do not rely on vehicle headlights to perform effectively.

To provide Canadians with more options to drive clean, the country’s government has announced a $450,000 (£262,000) investment in NB Power’s eCharge Network, adding nine new electric vehicle (EV) charging stations to the current ten, in New Brunswick. The transaction has been announced by Serge Cormier, member of parliament for Tracadie–Bathurst on behalf of the honourable Jim Carr, minister of natural resources. Cormier also confirmed that an additional $197,500 (£115,000) from the federal gas tax fund

Videology has added another extended SDI camera board to its latest range of cameras designed for traffic monitoring, surveillance and other non-traffic functions. Designated the 24RS2.0.XWEXSDI, it can transmit 1080P HD images up to 300m (1,000ft). The camera board is designed to obtain images beyond the human eye without near-IR LED illumination, which can also be used if required. Colour noise is reduced and colour brightness is enhanced. Sony Starvis’ sensor captures the available photon beyond near-IR

Union Tank Eckstein GmbH & Co. KG (UTA) will be providing an on-board unit (OBU) solution for the European Electronic Toll Service (EETS) to increase efficiency in customer mobility. It initially comprises tolling services in Austria, Belgium toll and Liefkenshoektunnel, Poland (A4), Spain, France, Italy and Portugal from next February. The toll solution is designed with the intention of allowing companies to use just one on-board unit within the EETS area. UTA will assume responsibility for the

Nuance Communications is supplying its cloud-based Dragon Drive speech recognition connected car platform to provide conversational and connected car services for the Audi 8. Dragon Drive uses natural language and text-to-speech to understand and respond to the driver’s commands.

Australian-based technology company Tritium’s Veefil-RT is a 50kW rapid charger for electric cars and the company claims it is 25 times faster than home charging, meaning a driver can add 50km range to an EV battery in 10 minutes or recharge 80% in around 30 minutes.

Royal Truck & Equipment, has unveiled the Colorado Department of Transportation (CDoT) autonomous attenuator truck, along with partners at Colas UK and Micro Systems. Designed to improve safety for roadway maintenance crews in work zones, these vehicles are usually positioned behind road construction crews in order to protect workers from the travelling public. In this case the truck is autonomous and therefore increases work zone safety by removing the driver from a truck that is designed to be hit.

The new IMX420 and IMX428 imaging sensors from Sony feature its third generation CMOS global shutter. Both models come with 7 megapixel resolution, with the IMX420 reaching frames rates of up to 170fps at 10 bit pixel depth. These sensors come equipped with the SLVS-EC interface and new features like high/low conversion gain (HCG), dual trigger, dual ADC and self-triggering to increase the maximum throughput for object recognition and quality assurance of moving objects in machine vision.

Hella says its APS-90 and APS-180 advanced people sensors are highly dynamic stereoscopic cameras with sufficient on-board computing power to bundle precise image processing and feature-rich application software in a new, appealing design. With their 3D imaging, low-light sensitivity and very short latency, the cameras are suitable for a wide range of people-counting applications and security solutions in any lighting conditions. The APS-90 is capable of monitoring an area up to 20m2, while the APS-180 can