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When an experiment with existing technology does a “good enough” job

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Re: When an experiment with existing technology does a “good enough” job

#51

Post by bigiain »

jldugger wrote: post #5

> I would expect part of that budget includes the replacement of several legacy databases and software applications to support the high frequency, low latency querying of license plates several times per second, per vehicle. Well, if we're just checking to see if a car is registered stolen, that's hopefully a very small database. A simple hash table should be sufficient for a yes/no decision. But God only knows what…

I would have thought the number of known-stolen plates would be small enough you could push the entire list out to the device.

Google reckons there's only 4.5 million registered vehicles in Victoria (.au) - with 6 character [A-Z0-9] = 36bit/5byte plates that's only gonna need ~22 meg to store them all and you've got a few bits for "flags" - even if 10% of them are listed as stolen at any time, you'd only need a couple of meg for the "stolen car list" - even without handwaving away the overhead for the data structure, this seems a reasonable solution. If you want the make/model/colour info you could then just query the remote db when you get a hit for a plate with the "stolen" flag set (or perhaps the "vehicle of interest" flag).

Of course nobody's gonna build it that way, because then you lose the data set of plate locations you can own without needing to ask for consent. This will, of course, store GPS location and timestamp of every plate is acquires, and if they're being particularly audacious, the actual imagery captured as well. That's how you make this a $80mil project... :-/

(Of course private industry already has this - tow trucks carry alpr rigs and sell the data to repo agencies in the US, I'm told...)

Re: When an experiment with existing technology does a “good enough” job

#52

Post by anitil »

taitems wrote: post #26
anitil wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're very right. At a quick glance, this thing is going to need power, probably from the car battery. You don't want it to catch fire and kill the occupants, so there's going to be R&D in power supplies, material etc, along with regulation and testing.

Emergency services vehicles run so much equipment they have isolated power from engine power.

Huh there you go! thanks

Re: When an experiment with existing technology does a “good enough” job

#53

Post by bigiain »

aaron695 wrote: post #42

> Imagine a passive system scanning fellow motorists for an abductors car that automatically alerts authorities and family members to their current location and direction. Seriously? You jumped the shark from interesting tech, to think of the children it's ok to go all Orwell here. First App I'd make. Cheating spouse app. Is your partner or Ex hiding from you. Pay here for tracking info. Part of which goes to the peo…

Nah - go B2B not B2C. Collect all the data and sell it to insurance companies. Let the health insurance companies increase people's rates for regularly using McDonalds drivethroughs. Let the auto insurance companies bump up your rates because you are seen near racetracks or vehicle modifiers. Charge income protections and disability insures to search for claimants to see what they're doing when they think they;re not under scrutiny "Mr Smith, you claim to be unfit to return to work, but you're paying golf twice a week!"

Re: When an experiment with existing technology does a “good enough” job

#54

Post by master_yoda_1 »

The author is just calling some api, I don't know how much technical knowledge people here at hacker news has, but this person is talking BS. No open source software are used here.

To the author: please spend some time and try to analyze the problem first. I don't think you even get the problem right, or know what open source is. A free api IS NOT an example of OPEN SOURCE.

Re: When an experiment with existing technology does a “good enough” job

#55

Post by taitems »

master_yoda_1 wrote: post #54

The author is just calling some api, I don't know how much technical knowledge people here at hacker news has, but this person is talking BS. No open source software are used here. To the author: please spend some time and try to analyze the problem first. I don't think you even get the problem right, or know what open source is. A free api IS NOT an example of OPEN SOURCE.

Not sure if trolling, but:

I'm using an open source license plate recognition system (OPENALPR), taking the produced registration number, and THEN querying the (yes, closed source) records database via web scraping. All tools used to achieve this, bar where the records are kept, are open source (openalpr, cheerio, node-horseman etc).

Re: When an experiment with existing technology does a “good enough” job

#56

Post by ChuckMcM »

Yup. I did something similar with a RasPi camera and OpenCV. On my house it store and record every license plate that drives by and/or stops. It certainly leads to some ethical questions (not that you couldn't record this data going all "Rear Window" on the neighborhood but it's quite easy to understand all the coming and goings of your neighbors.

Re: When an experiment with existing technology does a “good enough” job

#57

Post by stevenwoo »

anitil wrote: post #24
mintplant wrote: post #16

> Although, the solution would occasionally have issues with particular letters. A mistake like this can and has destroyed lives. http://thisiscriminal.com/episode-18-695bgk/ > Police officer John Edwards was patrolling a quiet neighborhood in Bellaire, Texas when he saw an SUV driven by two young African-American men. It was just before 2am on December 31, 2008. Edwards followed the SUV and ran the license plate num…

This sort of thing doesn't really happen in Aus. I could see someone getting arrested and spending a night in jail unnecessarily or maaaaaaybe tased (and to be clear, whether we consider this a fair price to pay is a different question), but police rarely shoot people here.

In my American government class in high school in Texas in 1984, I was taught to behave in such a way - keep hands on wheel, do exactly what you are told to, don't move suddenly, to minimize the chance police will kill you, because they don't know if you are a criminal with a weapon or not and a police officer has to be prepared for either situation. It helps immensely to not be an ethnic minority - representations in popular culture in America alude to the life or death possibility of every police stop for those communities like the recent episodes of the TV shows Insecure or Dear White People or Bruce Springsteen's song, 41 Shots. The other side of the coin is America extremely rarely prosecutes a police officer for killing someone, no matter what the circumstances, even if there is video.

Re: When an experiment with existing technology does a “good enough” job

#58

Post by DaiPlusPlus »

Johnny555 wrote: post #45
DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's so creepy someone might actually do it! It's only creepy if it's done on a targeted, individual basis, which it won't be. As it is - in many countries you legally have no expectation of privacy in a public place, so I have no problem with en-masse ANPR. If the police eventually develops a very dense sensor network that can track every car's movement across every intersection then there would be too much info…

it would reduce the need for inherently-dangerous hot pursuits to follow a vehicle as the cameras would do that anyway. It wouldn't really reduce the need for the infamous hot-pursuits because often in these hot pursuits, the car is stolen so the driver is not who the car is licensed to.

Hot pursuits are not primarily about identifying the driver either - it's about following the car so they know where it is so they can apprehend the driver. With a pursuit there's a panic, a high probability of the car being damaged or destroyed, and possible injury or death for the driver, the police involved, and of course, any pedestrians caught up in the way.

With a large enough ANPR network, there is no need to chase the car - so the driver won't necessarily panic or act irrationally to evade the police - leading to a higher probability of recovering the vehicle in good condition, and a successful non-dramatic apprehension of the suspects as it makes it easier to catch them by surprise, for example.

Re: When an experiment with existing technology does a “good enough” job

#59

Post by Johnny555 »

DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #58
Johnny555 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it would reduce the need for inherently-dangerous hot pursuits to follow a vehicle as the cameras would do that anyway. It wouldn't really reduce the need for the infamous hot-pursuits because often in these hot pursuits, the car is stolen so the driver is not who the car is licensed to.

Hot pursuits are not primarily about identifying the driver either - it's about following the car so they know where it is so they can apprehend the driver. With a pursuit there's a panic, a high probability of the car being damaged or destroyed, and possible injury or death for the driver, the police involved, and of course, any pedestrians caught up in the way. With a large enough ANPR network, there is no need to…

Right, it's not about identifying the driver, it's about apprehending the driver.

I hope I never live in a society where the driver of a stolen car can expect to be apprehended no matter where he stops because he'll be tracked by a camera network so ubiquitous that he can't escape it.

Because such a ubiquitous network means that all of my travels are being tracked and recorded too - which will likely include facial recognition, so there really will be no escaping Big Brother... and I don't trust any government with so much power and information over citizens to be benign.

Re: When an experiment with existing technology does a “good enough” job

#60

Post by taitems »

shadowtree wrote: post #3

Any project in a heavily regulated environment is not measurable that way. The cost comes from compliance, audits, paperwork. Trials, PoCs, etc. You also need to prove security and a long term lifecycle for the solution. Those open source packages - are they being updated? Who validates patches? etc etc. Those are moats, once you're able to deliver the above, you're set for a long time. Good luck!

As an aside, the trials and PoCs have already taken place as a separate project worth only $100,000.
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